Folks — I’m a born-and-raised Missourian.

And if Josh Hawley had his way, my kids would not be alive today.

I know that might sound dramatic, and this is a long email. But if you give me just a couple minutes of your time to explain, I know you’ll agree — and I hope you’ll then split a donation of any amount to help Lucas Kunce and Lisa Blunt Rochester to defeat Josh Hawley this November.

It might be easy to assume I’m talking about Hawley’s continued opposition to marriage equality. He even voted against it in 2022. While Josh Hawley does seem to care a lot about what happens in my bedroom, I’m actually not married — just gay.

While it’s safe to assume Hawley’s opposition to civil rights protections for gay Americans means he doesn’t want me to be a parent anyway, his assault on my right to build and raise a family has a lot more to do with reproductive freedom — something that matters to each and every one of you reading this.

Like many Americans — women, men, gay, straight — I had to rely on IVF to build my family. I’m so incredibly thankful for the doctors, donors, and rockstar surrogates who helped bring my kids into the world. Those women gave me life. They gave me the chance to have a family. And I will be forever indebted to them.

My son Ben was born in 2019, and my daughter Lucy was born in 2022 — just a few months before the Dobbs decision. As any parent with IVF kids can tell you, it isn’t easy. It’s expensive, takes time, and often fails. Fertilized embryos will almost inevitably be lost, and the costs associated with indefinite storage means extra embryos are almost always either donated to research, donated to family, or discarded. It’s an immense privilege to be able to build a family with IVF, when it should be a right.

Now, two years after Dobbs, we’re living in an America that has less freedom than it did before — from a total abortion ban in Missouri and IVF shutdowns in Alabama, to “fetal personhood” laws (which Missouri also has) that threaten reproductive freedom in its entirety.

And no U.S. Senator is more personally responsible for it than Josh Hawley — who is now up for his first election since everything changed.

You might already know about Josh Hawley’s extreme anti-choice views and how he’s used his taxpayer-funded office to support his wife's legal work in the Dobbs case and in the case to ban the abortion pill nationwide — and if that’s reason enough for you to want to help Lucas Kunce defeat Hawley in November, then please make that split donation to help him get it done.

But if you didn’t already know about Josh Hawley’s deep personal involvement in every single part of the nationwide assault on reproductive freedom, then keep reading.

It all started when Hawley led the Hobby Lobby case in front of the Supreme Court, which gave employers the power to refuse coverage for birth control for their workers. He even said contraceptives “may induce an abortion by preventing implantation of a fertilized egg” — which, to be clear, is not true or what an abortion is according to virtually every medical professional.

Once Hawley got to the U.S. Senate, he did everything he could to push his extreme anti-reproductive freedom agenda forward: Putting campaign donors as well as anti-IVF and anti-surrogacy extremists on our courts. Using his taxpayer-funded office to support his activist-lawyer wife's cases to overturn Roe, enacting Missouri’s total abortion ban, and even trying to ban the abortion pill nationwide. And sponsoring extreme “fetal personhood” bills at the national level.

Then, Hawley made it clearer than ever how he feels about IVF and our right to build a family: He voted against a bill to guarantee access to IVF and make it more affordable. His reason?

Hawley told the media the Right To IVF Act was really part of an “abortion agenda.”

I’m sorry, but that’s CRAZY.

His ultimate goal here is obvious — Josh Hawley doesn’t just want Big Brother politicians like himself to control us in our bedrooms and our doctor’s offices. He wants to control OUR bodies, and even how we choose to build and raise OUR families.

And if he gets another six years to finish what he’s started, then the ability to build a family like mine — or even likely a family like yours — could be made impossible.

Josh Hawley poses a unique and existential threat to reproductive freedom, and this is our one chance to put a stop to his crusade against our freedoms. We can’t afford to give him another six years in the U.S. Senate — so, I'm asking: Can you please split a donation between Lucas Kunce’s campaign and Lisa Blunt Rochester today so we can secure our freedoms?

If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately and be split between Lucas Kunce and Lisa Blunt Rochester:

I warned you already this was a long email, so you can’t blame me for wanting to tell you a bit more about Lucas Kunce and why I know he can defeat Josh Hawley — but only if he has your help. Lucas is the Marine veteran and born-and-raised Missourian taking Hawley on this November. He’s built a record-breaking movement and is drawing huge crowds at events across the state.

And he’s even sharing the ballot this November with a referendum to end the Hawley-backed abortion ban in Missouri, which will be a huge boost for Democratic turnout just as it has been in red and purple states across the country in recent elections.

Not long ago, Missourians came together to defeat Todd Akin after his extreme views on abortion came to light, but that didn’t happen overnight.

Akin exposed himself in August of that election year, and a poll that same month showed him with an 11% lead. It took weeks and MONTHS of hard work, advertising, and organizing to expose Akin’s extremism to Missouri voters — and because we all came together, Missourians rejected Akin on Election Day by a 15% margin (a total change of 26% from August).

And while you might be surprised to hear about Democrats doing that well in a red state, that kind of result isn’t rare in Missouri.

In our last U.S. Senate race that took place in a presidential election, Jason Kander outperformed the presidential ticket by 16%, nearly defeating incumbent Roy Blunt, who had the entire GOP establishment behind him. In fact, the race against Blunt got close with almost identical timing to the race against Akin — Kander was polling by as much as 14% behind Blunt, but after pushing hard on ads and organizing starting in the fall, the race was neck-and-neck.

Now I’m going to say something you may not want to hear, but it is true and important for this race: Josh Hawley is more extreme than Donald Trump and almost every Republican on reproductive freedom. In fact, he objectively has the worst record on reproductive rights of any U.S. Senator. That means we don’t have to wait for Hawley to have a “Todd Akin moment” — his entire six years in the Senate has been one.

But it’s an election year, which means Josh Hawley will be telling all sorts of lies to voters claiming he’s not responsible for this assault on our freedoms. And that’s where you and me come in.

We need to help Lucas expose Hawley’s anti-freedom crusade to Missouri voters on TV, online, at their doors, and in their mailboxes, and that takes resources. So if it wasn’t clear already, your support could make all the difference in this race — will you join me in helping Lucas beat Josh Hawley by splitting a donation of any amount between his campaign and Lisa Blunt Rochester today?

If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately and be split between Lucas Kunce and Lisa Blunt Rochester:

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, folks.

I hope you’ll join me in supporting Lucas this year.

Andy Cohen