FUQUAY-VARINA, N.C. — As the fate of Roe v. Wade hangs in the balance, Democrats look to make it a central issue with voters heading into the midterms in November. The abortion battle has long been tied to politics, but whether to have an abortion is a very personal decision.
What You Need To Know
Katie Shaw decided the fate of her unplanned pregnancy at the Hand of Hope Pregnancy Center four years ago
Religion played a huge role in her decision-making process to keep her baby; it also shapes her anti-abortion stance
As a single mom to a 3-year-old daughter, Shaw says inflation, not abortion, is a key issue for her at the ballot box in the November midterms
Katie Shaw regularly pops in for visits at the Hand of Hope Pregnancy Center, also known as Your Choice Pregnancy Clinic. The support she received there is something she will never forget.
“I love coming and seeing you ladies,” Shaw, a former client, said. “It just makes me feel so good when I walk in the door. Y’all have walked with us from the time I found out I was pregnant to now. It’s not just after the baby is born, you know, it’s over. It's continuous.”
Shaw’s pregnancy four years ago, at age 32, was unexpected.
“I struggled with what I was gonna do even before I walked into Hand of Hope,” Shaw said. “I had called, and I had planned, you know, to go to the abortion clinic and terminate the pregnancy.”
The women at her church convinced her to at least come into this pregnancy clinic for a free ultrasound because she didn’t have health insurance at the time. She did, and it changed everything.
“I was going to be a single mom. I didn’t think I could do it,” Shaw said, crying, as she thinks back to that time. “By coming here, I kept coming every week, and slowly the women would help me see that I could do it. And that God had chosen me to be her mom.”
Shaw says her biggest blessing is her daughter, Gemma, age 3.
“The minute that she was born, I fell in love with her,” she said.
Faith plays a huge role in Shaw’s life. She grew up in a religious household. It shapes her views on abortion.
“Women make hard choices every day, whether or not to keep their baby,” Shaw said. “And I am not judgmental or anything like that, but I know for me, I am pro-life.”
Since the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion the topic of abortion has come up with her family, friends and coworkers. Most of them, like Shaw, support Roe v. Wade being overturned.
Her message to women who feel like their reproductive rights will be stripped away if Roe is overturned: “It’s OK to disagree with each other. But at the end of the day, when that baby has a heartbeat, that baby is alive in there. It is not just a lump of cells. It is a human being in there. So that baby deserves the right to live.”
The U.S. abortion rate has been falling steadily for decades, according to an abortion-rights research group called the Guttmacher Institute. And, with the November midterm elections just around the corner, Shaw says abortion will not be a key issue for her at the ballot box. As a single mom, she says she’s more worried about inflation, the cost of living and rising prices for gas and groceries.