Heartbreaking Testimony from Jenny Box – Missouri Abortion Ban Bill

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

LIVE Testimony to the Missouri House Committee on Children and Families, Jefferson City, MO – HB126

My name is Jennifer Box and I live in St. Louis, MO. My husband and I have been married for 6.5 years and we have a 2-year-old son, Kellen. Our oldest boy, Everett, will turn four tomorrow.

This is a hard week for my family. One year ago, this coming Friday we got the most heartbreaking news — we learned our very wanted third child had a chromosomal anomaly. We got the first (of many) test results that our child, our daughter, had Trisomy 18. And that’s why I am here today, in the middle of our anniversary of our grief, to tell you the story of our daughter, Libby Rose Box. This little girl who broke our hearts wide open.

Almost a year ago on February 16, 2018, when I was around 13 weeks pregnant, I got the call with our early genetic testing results. That began the process of multiple tests, ultrasounds with the high risk OBGYN department, and meetings with genetic counselors. The general consensus was this – Libby’s condition was lethal; our daughter was dying. It was a matter of when, not if.

I spent hours each night wide awake in a panic going through different scenarios. If Libby was not stillborn, she would likely die within minutes or hours of birth. How would I explain that to our sons who would be only 3.5 and 1.5-years-old? In the unlikely event that she did live past her first day, she would be born into a life of endless medical and surgical intervention—feeding tubes, ventilators, and open-heart surgery.

She would require around the clock care her whole life. I would no longer be able to work. I am the breadwinner in our family and I provide our medical insurance. But I would have quit my job, sold our home – anything, if it meant our daughter could have any kind of life at all. The heartbreaking reality, though, was that simply was not possible for Libby.

Her short life would have always been one of agony.  

As a mother, I try to spare my children pain. My living children are young now, so it’s mostly me trying to prevent bumps and bruises. When all my thoughts circled round and round, what I kept returning to was this –my job as Libby’s mother was to keep her safe and protect her from pain. And there was one way I could do that. I could end her life before her suffering began.

As a parent, you have to make hard choices on behalf of your children. You have to decide for them when they can’t or won’t. As their parent, you know what is best for them—and this is what my greatest act of love as her mother could be—to grant her peace and spare her tiny, broken body a life of pain. To suffer myself, instead.

The bill being discussed today would make it impossible for my husband and I to make a decision for our daughter, as her parents, simply because we chose to raise our family in Missouri.

It is terrifying to imagine that politicians who are strangers to me would have more control over my daughter’s medical outcome than her father and I would.

I want you to know the women who make these decisions late in pregnancy are doing so out of mercy, love, and with days and weeks of contemplation, grief, sorrow, guilt, and heartbreak – they are women like me. Mothers like me. I’m asking you to allow for mercy, and trust the individual women and families in these harrowing situations.

HB 126, which bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be heard, would mean families like mine, who are living their worst nightmare, would in the midst of their of their grief, be forced to leave their home state to fight for their child.

I hope you will remember our daughter’s story and her name, Libby Rose Box, when you consider this bill.

Thank you for your time. I am open to any questions you wish to ask me about my experience.

Jennifer Box, St. Louis, Missouri