Missouri: The Abortion Ban and Purity Culture

Adelaine Tudor

I grew up in a Christian household in Missouri, meaning I spent my weekends in church and my summers at Vacation Bible School. VBS mostly entailed games, fun crafts, snacks, and lots of songs. Naturally, I loved it growing up. One day after snack, I remember, a guest speaker came to our class with a ‘Pro-Life’ button pinned to her chest. We all sat down on a carpet and let the church shove their anti-abortion propaganda down our throats. We were only eight at the time. At the end of her speech, she passed out baby bottles to all of us. She proceeded to instruct us to find as many coins as we could and eventually return them to her the following day. As an eight-year-old entertained by everything, I was excited to go on my quest for shiny coins and to collect them in my new baby bottle. Of course, I didn’t really understand what the coins were for. We originally were told it was to help babies. Who doesn't like babies? I thought to myself as I tore apart couch cushions and the backseat of the car looking for sparkling coins. Upon seeing the speaker the following day, I remember my pride in the baby bottle full of coins; I was, however, completely ignorant towards the fact that I was donating to a cause I would later learn to disagree with entirely. 

Years later, during the summer of 2019, a Missouri law was about to be passed to ban abortion after a heartbeat is detected with no exceptions for rape or incest. As a woman, this infuriated me. It should be up to me to decide when I am ready to have a child, choosing a time when I feel financially and mentally secure. The possibility of a woman, including myself, having to end their career at a young age because of an unwanted, unexpected baby scares me. Moreover, Missouri’s law has no exceptions for rape or incest maddens me even more.

For this piece, I sought insight on two women I know who have had an abortion before, wanting to hear their opinions. My great aunt, Pat, had an illegal abortion in Hawaii in 1970, one year after she gave her first child up for adoption. “Because of the experience I had the year before, I definitely did not want to experience that again,” says my Pat about giving her child up for adoption, “that was probably a hundred times more traumatic than the abortion. So I had the abortion because the person I was with clearly did not want to have children and I wasn’t in a place where I could [raise a child], so that was my decision”. When asked about the recent news in Missouri, she explains how “It infuriates me. It should be the woman’s choice.”

The second woman I interviewed, Erica White, told me about the miscarriage she had the year before her abortion and how she knew she was not ready to have a child at age twenty. “I didn’t want to go through the shame of having another unplanned pregnancy in this small town,” she stated. Erica’s mom was seventeen when she had her as a child, which was one of the factors that led to her decision to have an abortion. “She didn’t have time to explore herself and figure out who she was and really deal with her issues,” she said about the struggles of being raised by a young mom who wasn’t ready for a child. She brought me back to the day her and her boyfriend at the time traveled to a clinic in St. Louis to get the abortion. “There were people outside protesting and it felt very surreal and I remember walking in ignoring the people, feeling very melancholy because it felt like that’s what I was supposed to feel,” Erica recounted. “I think it’s completely ludicrous. People should understand Planned Parenthood and the services they provide for our community are so limited. The [Pro-lifers] are so obsessed with abortion they can’t see the forests for the trees,” she stated about the Missouri legislative effort to defund Planned Parenthood. 

One of the many things that confused and angered me about the pro-life movement was their opposition towards sex education in schools. When young people are taught how to have safe sex, unplanned pregnancy rates go down. Instead, teens in Missouri are taught abstinence. Growing up in church, I was always taught that sex before marriage was the ultimate sin; I was told no other man would want my “remains”. While the boys learned about sex itself, us girls sat in a room where a man compared us to sticks of gum. We were told that once we have sex, we become chewed up balls of gum, unwanted in the trash. I, like everyone else, believed it. I let the shame of sexual thoughts eat me alive because I didn’t want to be the chewed up wad of gum. Purity culture leaves girls feeling guilty and overall uneducated about sex. Education, education, education is key. No one can stop teens from having sex, so why not make sure it’s safe sex? Then, there will be fewer unwanted pregnancies and abortions like the pro-lifers want, right? Similarly. For abortion, even if states make abortion illegal, abortions will still happen. Banning abortions does not ban abortions altogether. Instead, it bans safe, legal abortions. Dangerous and painful abortions will become commonplace, threatening the safety of women. If abortion is still going to happen, why not make abortions safe? 

Thankfully, in the end, the Missouri abortion ban was blocked, but the fight for reproductive health, rights, and justice is not over just yet.