Growing up in a Baptist Church I was taught that abortion was wrong for any reason.

And I held those beliefs long into adulthood. My daughter was born at 30 weeks, 10 weeks premature. She weighed 3 lbs 6 oz and stayed in the NICU for a little over a month. I was told, based on test results prior to her birth, that she had Down's Syndrome and Spina Bifida. At one of my appointments with the high-risk specialist, we were told that she was missing her cerebellum and that they could only see 3 heart chambers. 

The suggestion at that appointment was to terminate the pregnancy.

Because I had recently had a miscarriage, we decided to continue the pregnancy and face the problems our daughter was facing when she was born. It was not long after that I was diagnosed with HELLP Syndrome and hospitalized for the duration of my pregnancy. On October 22, after being in the hospital for four days, my blood platelets dropped to 103,000. This was a very dangerous situation for me and my daughter. 

My doctor ordered an emergency c-section and Jenna was born that afternoon at 5:01 pm. She was immediately whisked away to the NICU and I was not able to see her for 3 days because of the severity of my condition. Much to our surprise, Jenna was born perfectly healthy, just tiny. I asked my doctor what could have caused such a drastic misdiagnosis and his reply was that HELLP Syndrome will sometimes cause these false markers before the symptoms of HELLP Syndrome show up in the mother. All of this really only strengthened my Pro-Life beliefs and it wasn’t until several years later that my views began to change. 

I began to understand that what we went through was tragic and hard, but we had so many advantages that other families do not have. We owned a home, had money in savings, good jobs and health insurance that covered almost all of those bills. We had my parents, my husband's parents and many friends that had the ability to support our journey no matter what it looked like. We had the resources to care for and raise a child with profound disabilities. 

After I began teaching school and saw how so many of my students' families lived and the lack of financial and emotional support they had, I began to see things differently.

And although I'd always had the view that the choice was up to each family to make, I thought that it was the worst choice they could make and I stood firm in my belief that Roe v. Wade would never be overturned. When it was overturned and so many states began to outlaw abortion for any reason, with no exceptions, I became alarmed and scared for those moms that had severe health issues or their unborn child had a devastating diagnosis. 

Even though I was Pro-Life, I always thought there should be exceptions, without any interference from government entities.

Seeing how states like Texas have handled the dismantling of Roe Vs. Wade has been nothing short of alarming. I can’t help but think of what might happen to me if I were to conceive another child. In all likelihood, based on my doctor's knowledge, and experience, another pregnancy could very well be life-threatening. 

I can not imagine a time that I would willingly leave my current child without a mother and my husband widowed. There are women all over our country right now facing immensely difficult choices and now are being required to add to that trauma the need to get government officials to make a decision over some of the most personal decisions anyone can ever face. No government official is in a better place to make these decisions than the woman and her doctor. We must leave these decisions to the woman and her doctor.