Display menu items of unpublished nodes to users without "Administer Content" permission
I ended up using a module called Menu view unpublished which is a ...

Small module that allows users to view menu links to unpublished nodes.
The menu system from Drupal core hides menu links that link to nodes
that are unpublished. This modules provides a permission that undoes
this behavior, but only if the user has access to view the
(unpublished) node.