Mother counters claims that Amendment 3 would deny lifesaving healthcare to women
Was treated ‘without hesitation’ for ectopic pregnancy during Missouri’s near-ban on elective abortion
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Destiny Rehagen Schulte was furious when she saw the campaign commercial again.
It was the same flawed message that had helped convince people to vote for an abortion-friendly amendment to the Missouri Constitution in 2024.
Mrs. Schulte knew better.
“Once again, I was shocked and appalled at the outright and blatant lies being portrayed to the public,” she stated in an Oct. 14 Facebook post.
In the commercial, a paid actress talks about being denied lifesaving healthcare under a near-ban on elective abortion.
“I simply cannot allow these lies to go unchecked,” Mrs. Schulte stated online. “In fact, I am shocked that propagating such a lie can even be legal.”
She and her husband, Clinten Schulte, are members of Cathedral of St. Joseph Parish in Jefferson City.
Their third child was 5 months old in August 2024 when Mrs. Schulte started feeling lightheaded and nauseated.
“These are common symptoms of pregnancy,” she noted in hindsight. “They’re also common symptoms of ectopic pregnancy.”
She took a pregnancy test, and it came back positive.
She and her husband were “both happy but a little surprised.”
“Our youngest was still pretty little!” she noted. “But that’s how it happens sometimes. So, here we were, happy to be welcoming another baby into the family.”
At first, the couple only spoke to God about the news.
“We told him, ‘Thank you!’” Mrs. Schulte recalled. “We always start praying right away when we find out we’re pregnant. We were very excited.”
Mindful of possible complications early in pregnancy, they also asked the baby’s Guardian Angel to look out for her or him.
They soon shared the news with their other children: “Mommy has a baby in her belly again.”
“Moderate pain”
Before long, Mrs. Schulte started noticing symptoms often associated with miscarriage.
She turned again in prayer to God, mindful that some of her friends had had similar situations during pregnancy and given birth to strong, healthy babies.
She got in touch with her healthcare team, who had guided her through the delivery of her other children.
This was before passage of a constitutional amendment wiped away years of regulations and safeguards on abortion in this state.
“We were still under what everyone would consider an (elective) abortion ban following the overturning of Roe v Wade,” Mrs. Schulte noted.
Her obstetrician at what was then known as Capital Region Medical Center in Jefferson City took blood samples to check for the proper levels of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), a hormone essential to healthy pregnancy.
“The level needed to be doubling every so often,” Mrs. Schulte noted. “So, that’s what they were looking for.”
The first two tests were promising, even as she continued experiencing some symptoms of miscarriage.
The doctor prescribed medication to help raise Mrs. Schulte’s progesterone level.
“If your progesterone is low, as is often the case in nursing mothers, the baby can’t implant properly in the uterus,” Mrs. Schulte noted.
She went back a couple of weeks later for more labs and found that her hCG levels weren’t rising at an acceptable rate.
“My doctor was getting concerned,” she said. “And my symptoms were getting worse.”
She mentioned the symptoms to her mother, who wondered out loud if they could be symptoms of an ectopic pregnancy.
That serious condition happens early in pregnancy, when the tiny pre-born baby implants outside the mother’s uterus, often in one of her fallopian tubes.
“I told her that’s very uncommon and probably not the case here,” Mrs. Schulte recalled. “I wasn’t on the floor, writhing in pain, unable to walk. It was moderate pain.”
Her doctor continued doing bloodwork and determined that the baby had grown large enough to be seen on an ultrasound.
“So, she scheduled an ultrasound,” said Mrs. Schulte.
“No hesitation”
The day before her appointment, the pregnant mother was doubled over in pain.
“I had never had a miscarriage before, so I thought maybe this was just part of what happens if you do,” she said.
She endured a restless night, then went for her ultrasound.
“Pretty much as soon as the imaging technician looked at the image, she called the on-call ob/gyn,” Mrs. Schulte recalled.
The on-call doctor told her, “You have an ectopic pregnancy. Your right fallopian tube is ruptured, you’re bleeding internally, and you have to have emergency surgery today.”
Mrs. Schulte was shocked to learn that hers and her baby’s lives were both in danger.
“The nurses and pre-surgery team were as compassionate as could be and explained the whole thing to us,” she said.
They told her and Mr. Schulte: “There is nothing we can do to save the baby. If you die, then you and the baby will both die.”
There was no stopping to check the laws, no conferring with an attorney or hospital administration.
“There was absolutely no hesitation,” said Mrs. Schulte. “Nobody said anything about the laws for abortion or anything like that. It was, ‘This is what’s going on, and this is what we need to do to save you, and this is what we’re going to do.’”
The hospital staff were resolute but very compassionate and understanding that the Schultes were losing their baby.
Mrs. Schulte kept praying, “Please don’t take the mother of my children from them.”
“I wasn’t worried about myself,” she noted. “I didn’t want my kids to grow up without a Mom.”
“In his love and mercy”
Mrs. Schulte asked if the baby could be surgically removed from the fallopian tube and implanted in the uterus.
Her doctor told her that would not be possible.
“Especially once you have a rupture, things are dissolving rapidly,” the doctor said.
The baby’s grandmother asked for an on-call priest to be summoned.
“He came right away,” said Mrs. Schulte.
The priest administered the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick, imposing hands on Mrs. Schulte’s head and praying silently over her.
He then anointed her hands and spoke: “Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit. May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.”
At that time, the hospital had a program for mothers going through miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy, where the baby’s remains would be retained and buried with a proper ceremony at a nearby cemetery.
“I was very thankful for that,” said Mrs. Schulte. “It took a huge weight off of me and my husband in that moment.”
Her mother told their other children, “Mommy is going to the doctor and getting a surgery, and we’re going to say some prayers for her.”
“In heaven with God”
The anesthesia was administered, and Mrs. Schulte drifted from anxiety to deep sleep.
She asked God and her Guardian Angel to protect her, and her baby’s Guardian Angel to take him or her safely back to God.
The couple chose a gender-neutral name for the baby: Gale Beretta Molla, in honor of St. Gianna Beretta.
Mrs. Schulte came home from the hospital with a stack of paperwork and resources for grieving the death of a baby before birth.
The papers were adorned with flowers and beautiful writing.
“I remember my oldest saying, ‘Mom, what’s all this pretty paper for?” she said. “She was the only one old enough to understand that one of our babies is now in heaven with God.”
The Schultes still grieve over the death of their baby.
“Losing a baby at any point, I think you grieve for a lifetime,” said Mrs. Schulte. “Sometimes, out of nowhere, we think back on it. It hits hard out of the blue like these things do.”
She conceived their fifth child shortly after their fourth child died.
“Luckily, that’s taken up a lot of our time!” said Mrs. Schulte. “He and our other children keep us nice and focused.”
The mother mentioned a few things people generally can do better to help couples who are grieving the loss of a baby before or shortly after birth.
“Lots of prayer!” she emphasized. “Prayer goes a long way.”
People’s default response tends to be pretending that nothing happened, “because it’s an uncomfortable subject.”
“I think if we made it more normal to talk about this kind of loss, it would be a great help for a lot of people,” she said. “I think people would become more comfortable with grieving the loss of a baby.”
She called to mind a simple word of kindness from her brother, who had experienced miscarriage with his wife earlier that year.
“He said, ‘I’m so sorry that this happened to you,’” she recalled. “That meant the world to me.”
“Common sense”
Mrs. Schulte will vote yes on Amendment 3, and she and her husband are praying a Novena for Life for its passage.
She hopes people will listen and learn from their experience.
“I’m a real person, I have a real story, and this all happened under Missouri’s ‘restrictive’ abortion laws,” she said. “No one hesitated to treat my condition. Not even for a second.
“When you see an ad saying women are going to be denied lifesaving healthcare because of an abortion law, it’s completely inaccurate and untrue,” she said.
She’s seen the bombastic headlines that say otherwise.
“If you look into it, in almost all of those cases, those women were victims of medical malpractice, not a state’s abortion law,” she said.
She pointed to the verbiage presented in Amendment 3: “A woman’s ability to access health care in cases of miscarriage, ectopic pregnancies and other emergencies shall not be infringed by the state.”
She believes that those words are honest and true.
“No doctor will ever willingly let a woman die,” she said. “It seems silly to have to say this. It’s common sense. But people have been lied to for so long, they think doctors will let women die if an abortion restriction is put into place.”
She added that Amendment 3 would restore legal liability to medical professionals who commit malpractice while administering reproductive healthcare.
“It would hold them more accountable than the current situation does,” she noted.
“When they insult you”
Mrs. Schulte almost never posts on social media, but she and her husband agreed that she needed to take a stand.
“We were sickened by the ads we were seeing,” she said. “We shared the truth, and now we’re counting on God to protect us.”
Numerous people have commented — many thanking her for her witness, some telling her she’s wrong.
“I can’t even believe some of the rude and nasty things people say about someone losing a baby in any context,” she said.
“I just want people to know the truth,” she stated. “Those ads they’re putting out there do pull on your heartstrings. Who would vote for something if it meant doctors are going to let women die because they’re pregnant?
“But that’s not the truth of the matter,” she said. “So, when anyone spews hatred or vitriol at us, we just pray for them and hope they will one day reassess and change their minds.”
All within the Church who are in need of mercy and healing for past wounds or sins are invited and encouraged to seek God’s forgiveness and restoration through the Sacrament of Reconciliation with their pastor or any priest. God desires healing, mercy, and new life for all.
