We Live In A Red State. Here’s Why It Doesn’t Feel Safe To Have A Second Child.

On nights my husband, Donald, dreams of our daughter, he wakes up in a sweat and rushes to the nursery, only to find an empty office, our books and a collection of houseplants staring back at him. There was never a crib there. We have never even had a positive pregnancy test.

I’m 36, which also means each passing year makes her likelihood of existence even dimmer. But he dreams of a daughter anyway, and in those dreams, she feels as tangible as an empty office desk or a prayer plant before dawn, leaves folded together in some kind of devotion. She’s a ghost trapped in his subconscious, an apparition only made stronger by our decision not to have a second child.

It’s not for the same reasons most millennials offer — we aren’t leaning into wanting more personal or financial freedom. It’s not even fear of future environmental disasters that stops us. Instead, our decision is shaped by the lack of safety our home in Missouri can offer me if I were to become pregnant again.

The fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022 solidified our decision to avoid pregnancy altogether, especially after Missouri was the first state to make abortion illegal just a handful of minutes after the announcement — a decision announced by the attorney general and reinforced by the governor. We were in Vermont when it happened, so I felt safe enough for the moment. My husband was working as the director for a low-residency MFA program, and my son and I had joined him as a small summer vacation while he worked 17-hour days.

On our way back to Missouri, I tried to hold on to the image of the people we’d seen in the streets of Montpelier holding signs for reproductive rights: “PRO-CHOICE IS PRO-LIFE,” “WE ARE NOT OVARY-ACTING,” an image of a hanger with the words reading: “NEVER AGAIN.” A group of women dressed in bloodred cloaks and white bonnets walked with their heads down, mouths tight in silent protest on the lawn of Vermont’s state capitol.

It was a stark contrast to what greeted us back home in Columbia, Missouri. A group of Christians preached about sacred unborn lives to unhoused people just trying to sleep on park benches. In front of our small Planned Parenthood, a woman sat in a lawn chair with her ible and a protest sign facing toward the door, a black gate separating her from the building. There was a late June sprinkling of rain, but she never budged, even though that Planned Parenthood hadn’t performed an abortion since the summer of 2018, when new state legislation required a physician to be available 24/7 and mid-Missouri couldn’t find an OB-GYN willing to do the task alone. By October of that year, only one clinic remained in St. Louis, making it a 400-mile round-trip drive for pregnant people in more distant parts of the state to get an abortion if needed — a nearly impossible requirement for those coming from impoverished areas.

In 2024, Missouri ranks 40th in women’s health and reproductive care, a number that also reflects one of the “highest pregnancy-associated maternal mortality rates in the United States.” After reaching the age of 35, the likelihood of maternal mortality is even higher. Geriatric pregnancies are more at risk for fetal genetic disorders, high blood pressure and miscarriage. As the age of eggs increases, so does the possibility of danger for both the fetus and the pregnant person. Abortion bans exacerbate that danger.

In August 2022, when Mylissa Farmer from Joplin, Missouri, felt her water break in her 18th week of pregnancy, she was refused emergency treatment at two hospitals in Missouri and Kansas because her baby’s heartbeat was still detectable, despite the fact that the pregnancy was no longer viable and her health was endangered. She eventually received treatment by driving well over 400 miles away to Illinois. After an investigation in 2023, both hospitals who denied her abortion services were deemed to be violating federal law. Thankfully, Farmer survived the traumatic ordeal; many are not so lucky.

None of this was a factor for my first and only pregnancy. I had my son when I was 17, a decade before I met Donald. I wasn’t in a relationship with the father. Having been raised as a Southern Baptist deep in the Ozarks, this was controversial. I had to write a letter to my church, where I ran Bible study, apologizing for getting pregnant out of wedlock. I also had to get an ultrasound at the Pregnancy Care Center, which was a conservative-leaning program masking itself as an alternative to Planned Parenthood. If you mentioned you were thinking about an abortion, they’d write your name down and proselytize to you.

I felt trapped, like I was the last person who had access to my own body. A month later, when the Pregnancy Care Center featured me in their newsletter because I had chosen to keep the baby, I wanted to reach out to the editor to make a small correction: I felt forced to have a baby, by religion and Ozarks culture.

My husband fell in love with “Elm” as a potential baby name while I was visiting Colorado, perusing necklaces made of gold-plated leaves in the souvenir section of a Rocky Mountain gas station. On the phone, I read him the meanings of each tree: Aspen for transformation, Oak for stability, Elm for strength. It was 2019, and we were poor graduate students far from the thought of having a baby. Our focus was on finishing school and providing a space for my teenager.

Five years later, Donald was offered a tenure-track professorship at University of Missouri-Columbia, providing the security we would need to have another child. My son is in college now, and we are suddenly empty nesters in a quiet house where something is noticeably missing. When Donald wakes up from another dream, a looming guilt settles over me, even when he assures me that he’s found comfort in thinking perhaps a version of us has Elm in another world, a parallel universe where a geriatric pregnancy wouldn’t imply danger in a red state — in our home.

I don’t love the name Elm, but I love how he loves it — how it implies he wants to have a daughter who is strong. I also love that my husband loves me enough to acknowledge the trauma that came with my first pregnancy and why I have complicated feelings about withstanding another, more dangerous one. Even though he reassures me that my body’s safety, both mentally and physically, is most important, the guilt remains. The fear of what my body could do to me outweighs it.

Even still, there are times when I think of Elm existing — not in a parallel universe or another plane, but this reality. In my mind, we’ll sell our side-by-side desks and replace them with a crib, a mobile with birds or whales or geometric shapes dancing above. We’ll find somewhere else in the house to write and make room for a new life.

On Nov. 5, 10 states including Missouri will be featuring bills voting on abortion rights or the further protection of abortion rights already in place (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and South Dakota). Missouri will vote on Amendment 3, or the “Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative,” an act that was nearly shut down in the state Supreme Court with a 4-3 ruling. If Amendment 3 passes, abortion rights would be restored across the state, following the same path as our Kentucky and Kansas neighbors. This election is so much more than a presidential one — it’s one that could show abortion opponents that the majority of our people want and need access to reproductive care, even in states that consistently vote red.

If it does pass, our dreams of Elm might become something more tangible. Until then, the possibility remains just out of reach, one more choice to which I’ve lost access.

Bailey Gaylin Moore is a Ph.D. student in Creative Writing at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her debut essay collection, “Thank You for Staying With Me” (University of Nebraska Press, March 2025), which navigates young motherhood and loving her complicated home of Missouri, is available for pre-order. Find her at baileygaylinmoore.com and @baileygaylin on Instagram.

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