WORLAND – Adding up the lifetimes of her eight children, Judy Martinson has accrued 93 years' worth of motherhood experience. "I never envisioned myself having eight kids by any stretch at all, ever. Yet apparently, that's what I needed," Martinson said.

Martinson came from a family of five. Her mother, Susan Lockhart, stayed home with the children until they were older, then began working at the Northern Wyoming Daily News, where Martinson's father, Lee Lockhart, was publisher. After three years of pursuing a music education degree, Martinson changed tracks, joined the family business as sports editor and married her husband, Mike Martinson. She enjoyed taking fast-action sports photos and the rush of Friday nights, hurrying from the games to her office to get a story written in time to go to press.

"People take sports very serious," Judy Martinson said. "I think it's natural that if you were a man entering into writing about sports, people would just assume you knew sports already. I think I had to maybe prove it a little bit that I was like, in it for reals not just a showpiece."

"I just kept showing up every day. I really ended up a big wrestling fan, even though I knew zero, nothing about it going into it. So, I think that that helped my credibility a little bit, by having to understand the sports."

In the early 2000s, the Martinsons were given something of a surprise. Judy was pregnant with their first child. "It was really kind of bizarre, kind of foreign at first. I was like, 'I'm not old enough, I don't know enough to be a mom,'" she said.

After her daughter's birth, Martinson didn't even take six weeks before returning to work, something she regrets. "I really feel like children are seen as impediments when choosing a career, like, 'Sorry, I can't afford to stay home,'" Martinson said. She added that there are great emotional, mental and physical changes involved with motherhood that warrant time away from work, something that other countries accommodate through paid parental leave.

According to NPR, out of 193 United Nations countries, New Guinea, Suriname, a few South Pacific Islands and the United States are the only ones not to have a national paid parental leave law. Through the Family and Medical Leave Act, U.S. citizens are guaranteed 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year.

At the same time, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 71.2 percent of mothers participated in the labor force in 2021. A 2007 study published in the American Journal of Sociology showed that mothers were recommended a 7.9 percent lower starting salary than non-mothers and rated six times less likely than a childless woman to be recommended for hire. The bias has been dubbed "the motherhood penalty."

"I think there's a choice to not make it work in the United States," Martinson said. "I really do think that motherhood is not valued to building up a greater society. When you force them into work too soon [after childbirth], I think it's to the detriment of the children and to the mother herself."

Martinson continued to work, with her family providing childcare, up until the birth of her third child. She was induced with her daughter, who was due around Christmas, so that everyone could be home for the holiday, which Martinson did not agree with.

"It was really kind of upsetting. I know it's like, 'Advocate for yourself!' and blah, blah, blah, but once you're in that situation, it's much harder and you're viewed as maybe non-compliant," Martinson said. She explained that in her experience with the medical system, she did not feel valued as a person and was instead seen as a problem to be solved as conveniently as possible.

"Once you have the baby, you're just kicked out, and you're on your own," Martinson said. She failed to breastfeed twice, something that she is now passionate about. "I felt like when I was struggling with it, they were like, 'It doesn't really matter.' It did matter, to me, but I couldn't make it work because I had to go back to work so soon anyway."

For her last five children, Martinson used a midwife, a practice that only became licensable in Wyoming in 2010. She explained that the care was more focused on her health as well as her child's, before, during and after pregnancy, something she described as "whole person-based." Someone was there to answer her questions and address her concerns, allowing her to experience motherhood in her own time, what Martinson considers a more natural process. She avoids the healthcare system when possible.

In 2019, Wyoming's maternal mortality rate rose to 34.8 deaths per 100,000 live births-up from 24.6 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2018. In 2022, three maternity wards in Rawlins, Riverton and Kemmerer closed. "You go through it all," Martinson said, "and then you just have bills that just keep rolling in, and that's kind of crazy." The United States has the most expensive childbirth costs in the world, according to the International Federation of Health Plans.

Wyoming extended Medicaid postpartum coverage from 90 days to one year with legislation signed by Governor Mark Gordon on Friday, March 3. The extension will last until 2027, benefiting an estimated 1,250 women according to the Wyoming Legislative Services Office.

Another issue recently addressed through the Wyoming Legislature is abortion access. Currently, abortion in Wyoming is legal up until viability, around 24 weeks of gestation. After the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022, Wyoming enacted a trigger ban on abortion that has been tied up in the state Supreme Court since, on the contention that the Wyoming constitution allows each competent adult to make their own health care decisions. The Life is a Human Right Act, signed by the Senate President on March 3, prohibits abortions except in instances of incest or rape, and will become effective in the event that the previous trigger law is ruled unconstitutional. Chemical abortions are prohibited through Senate File 93, signed by the Speaker of the House on Friday.

Martinson spoke as someone who is pro-life, "I don't devalue a person for their choices in their life. But I do think that humans are humans from the get-go." She explained that she doesn't believe women should be punished for seeking abortion, even if she does not agree with the morality of the procedure.

"I understand that there are very real hurdles to existing in a pro-life society of sorts. When our jobs don't value children, how are you supposed to make this right choice, or something, to raise this child, because it's going to be hard. There are a lot of roadblocks and things that are going to impede a lot of that. So, I can have my great ideals and whatever, but I understand that there's a very real hurdles to making this ideal utopia," Martinson said.

When asked what she wished people knew about her decision to become a full-time mother, Martinson said, "It has value intrinsically, just in being a mother, whether I bring in money, or I don't bring in money, or I just manage the money that's brought in."

"Sometimes I think about it like the starfish story," she said. "Somebody's walking on the beach, and they throw a starfish back in the ocean. And somebody's like, 'That doesn't make any difference!' But to that starfish, it does.

"Maybe me and my kids, individually, are not going to change the world. But you can still go out and be good people. I just want them to be good people. I don't care what they do. I don't care what they grow up to be or anything like that, but I do want them to be lights in the world."