The present abortion debate is deeply personal for grandmother Kathy Dey from Haslett. As a 14-year-old, Kathy had an abortion. At the time she thought it was the “easy way out.” “I think a lot of women believe that having an abortion is an easy way out and it’s not at all,” says Kathy. “In fact, it leads to years and years of unhappiness and regret that just bring you down — no, it’s not an ‘easy way out’ at all.”

Proposal 3 is being described by many pro-life observers as the most extreme pro-abortion manifesto in U.S. history.

Kathy is voting “no” as “there’s always a better option than abortion.” In fact, she still laments the personal cost to her, and so many other women, of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 which legalized abortion across this country.“On the day Roe v. Wade fell in June of this year, I just cried. I’m not an emotional person, but it just overwhelmingly penetrated my heart like, ‘Oh, my gosh, if this had never been put into law in the first place, I would not have had my abortion,’ most likely.” Kathy says that a mother’s trauma after an abortion isn’t always immediate but “after a few years it starts weighing on you.” In her case, that moment came after getting married and having more children.

“When I held my son and daughter, the protection and love I felt for those little lives overwhelmed me. How could I have killed my earlier child — my first baby? The shame and guilt haunted me. I cried a lot in their first months, but I suffered the grief and tears in silence.”

Over the years, Kathy has been able to find greater healing and peace with the support of Rachel’s Vineyard, the world’s largest apostolate for healing after abortion. Through that ministry, Kathy says she’s been able “to truly grieve for my unborn baby, and to give her the honor and dignity she deserves. I named her Ella and came to know her as my daughter, not just the secret I had been hiding from the world.” Kathy hopes that her story can add some light to the often-heated abortion debate.

“I think there has to be a lot of education to the public about abortion and its evils,” she says, “Abortion is wrong. I think that life begins at conception. The heartbeat starts so early. It’s a living human. It has a separate DNA. It’s not just a growth of the mothers. It’s a separate person that we are killing.”