Showing posts with label Conceived in rape. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conceived in rape. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Saturday, June 22, 2013
by Rebecca Kiessling
H.R. 1797 — The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act pending in Congress, as amended on June 14, 2013, now has a rape and incest exception — as if children conceived in rape are such freaking mutants that we are incapable of feeling pain. Well, I’m feeling the pain right now — especially when you’ve thrown us under the bus! This is a callous attack on children conceived in rape — a wanton and reckless disregard for our lives. The first section of the bill goes into great detail how unborn children experience pain, and why, beginning at 20 weeks gestation, unborn children should be protected — and then it excludes the weakest, most vulnerable, easy targets, the most marginalized and discriminated segment of our population — “the least of these.” And much of the pro-life leadership are still pushing the bill, which is the real problem, because the exceptions wouldn’t be in the bill if the Representatives didn’t know that they could count on the support of major pro-life organizations.
Once again, the debates on Facebook and Twitter echo the same sentiment of the majority voices in the pro-life movement for the last 40 years — you “save the 99 in exchange for the 1.” Of course, whenever I hear that phrase I can’t help but think of the Parable of the Lost Sheep in which Jesus was talking about the little children and “the least of these.” He was all about saving the 1! But the slogan goes — “save as many as you can while working to save all.” Really? Tell me what you’re doing to work to save all, because I don’t see it. There is no strategy within the greater pro-life movement to go back to save the 1. And the fact is, if we are going to be saved, we need to be part of a package deal because it doesn’t seem like very many would follow Jesus’ example of going off just to save the 1. After all, the Hyde Amendment exceptions have been in place for 20 years now, and I’ve never heard discussions of any strategy to go back to remove those exceptions. I would love to see an example where there was a law with a rape exception and someone went back to save the 1 and the rape exception was removed from the law.
The other argument is that the votes simply aren’t there. Well, tell me what efforts you’ve been making in order to see that the votes are there in the future to be able to save all. Have you identified who the rape exception legislators are? Are you bringing in speakers like me who were conceived in rape who could possibly change their hearts and minds, like my experience with Gov. Rick Perry and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich? Are you planning a campaign to target them in their primaries so that we can elect no-exceptions legislators? Do you have a policy for your PAC endorsements that candidates who make the rape exception can’t get your endorsement — at least in the primaries? What is your strategy to save all? If you don’t have one, then your words are surely meaningless. As the saying goes, your actions speak so loudly, I can’t hear what you’re saying. It’s mere lip-service. But the donors have no idea. . . . If the party platform of the Republican party is no-exceptions, then surely the grass-roots supporters of the pro-life movement are no exceptions as well, but the donors likely assume those values are upheld by the organizations they financially support.
In Footnote 54 of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v Wade, as part of the personhood discussion, the Court pointed out the fact that Texas had exceptions, and that this undermined the State’s whole argument for personhood. The Court recognized that when you make exceptions, you demonstrate that you don’t really believe that’s a person — that ANY are persons, and when ALL aren’t protected, NONE are protected. If we are ever going to see Roe v Wade overturned, we need to stop compromising. The Hyde Amendment has had a chilling effect on states that want to pass Personhood statutes or abortion bans, because their budget office gets the bills killed on the floor because under Hyde, they MUST fund abortions in cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother.
I’ve learned that advocates for compromise don’t like having the label of “compromiser” associated with them in any way. It’s been suggested that I’m name-calling or questioning their pro-life values and intentions. It’s not my intent to do so. I know that they are good-willed pro-life people who need to see the fallacies in their strategy and the undermining of their principles. It’s not right that legislators can count on the greater pro-life movement’s support every time a rape exception is added. When you set the bar low, they will meet it. For once, I’d like to see the majority voice tell them “No, that’s not acceptable!” How can you demonstrate that you’ve fought for children conceived in rape? And I mean really fought battles for – where you staked your claim and stood up to legislators and candidates?
Right to Life of Michigan has actually fought for children conceived in rape — consistently. Because of their uncompromising principles, there has never been a rape exception in the history of Michigan law. When they didn’t have the votes to pass the state version of the Hyde Amendment without a rape exception, they worked on the legislators to get them to change. And when they still didn’t have the votes, they targeted them in the primaries, got several voted out, and the very next legislative session, they got it passed with no exceptions — that’s how you get it done! Sadly, for many years, RLM was the only affiliate of NRLC who had this no compromise policy. But they’ve now mentored many others like Georgia RTL, Tennessee RTL, South Dakota RTL and Alaska RTL who’ve now gone to the no exceptions/no compromise model. American Life League has this same policy, as well as Personhood USA. Does the pro-life organization you support have this policy? Ask them! Challenge them.
Please don’t accuse anyone of not really being pro-life — that’s not at all helpful. We actually want them to change their policy. It’s possible — look at Gov. Rick Perry and look at Georgia Right to Life. Nearly 13 years ago, GRTL was ranked 50th by AUL as being the worst state for pro-life legislation. After having changed their policy, they are now ranked 2nd and have a Gold Star rating with AUL. They got the mediocre exceptions legislators out and got passionately pro-life legislators in. And they helped to change many from being mediocre to being passionate about their pro-life values. It’s all about leadership.
I’ve said this before — we are not cannon fodder! How dare anyone assume that they can put us out on the front lines and then take a giant step back. You don’t discriminate. Can you imagine if there were a rape exception in case of bi-racial rape? The arguments would be the same — “you save the 999 in exchange for the 1,” and “it’s just that the baby would look more like the rapist and be more of a constant reminder of the rape” — arguments which I’ve heard before! Can you imagine the national outcry from civil rights leaders? ”How dare you discriminate!” And yet, so many think nothing of discriminating against children conceived in rape.
Some have said to me, “It’s nothing against you personally.” But it affects me personally. After all, I am aperson, right? I’m alive today because of no exceptions/no compromise pro-life leaders who recognized that mine was a life worth saving, and they ensured that I was legally protected. I feel like my life was rescued from a burning building. How could I not return to that building to save the others? How could I not advocate that they should be rescued as well?
Just remember — the U.S. Supreme Court said rapists don’t deserve the death penalty — that it’s cruel and unusual punishment for even child molesters. So why should an innocent child deserve the death penalty for the crimes of her father? Is that so hard to say? Defend us.
Friday, December 21, 2012
There is a new Pro-life organization and website Save the 1 who's mission is to save the 1% of children who are aborted and often even left behind by many who profess themselves to be pro-life. They are the "exceptions" the 1% exceptions that many make on abortion issues. These are the children who were conceived in rape, incest, have poor in utero diagnosis, abortion survivors, and frozen embryos, etc. They are the quote "hard cases" unquote of abortion.It's director is well known Attorney and Pro-life Speaker Rebecca Kiessling who was herself conceived in rape so this is a project near and dear to her heart. There are many more pro-life speakers who are going to be a part of this wonderful new organization including Melissa Ohden, Pam Stenzel, Susan Jaramillo, Sherrie Eldridge, Ryan Scott Bomberger, and many more still to be announced.
I am very honored to be able to be a small part of this organization in doing the web design and updates for Save the 1. I would like to thank Rebecca for allowing me to work with her on this important cause it has been a true pleasure and honor working with her and all the others involved with Save the 1.
Although the website is new and just getting started it already has some great content available and much more is going to be added on a regular basis! So all pro-lifer's need to visit and check this site regularly and follow their Facebook page for upcoming news!
Please check it out today and help support the 1%. It's time for truly no child to be left behind. It's time to stop the exceptions and for everyone especially those who say they are pro-life to stand up and be truly 100% PRO-LIFE!
Friday, November 9, 2012
I knew this would happen! I predicted that Republican party apologists would blame Richard Mourdoch and Todd Akin’s losses on the fact that they are 100% pro-life, instead of acknowledging that the losses were due to how poorly they expressed their positions. And sure enough, the day after the election, Ann Coulter did just that. In her article entitled, “Don’t Blame Romney,” she spent half of the article blaming these two Senate candidates for daring to defend the life of every preborn child. Her exact words were, “because these two idiots decided to come out against abortion in the case of rape and incest,” calling them “pro-life badasses,” “purist grandstanders,” with “insane positions,” who were “showing off.” Unfortunately, Coulter has a huge following and will surely influence many uninformed readers with her misstatement of the facts and her flawed reasoning. I have great concern that these Senate losses will have a chilling effect on pro-life legislators and voters. Hence, a swift and thorough response is in order.
Ann Coulter, referenced “all the hard work intelligent pro-lifers . . . in the trenches” and what they have accomplished, as if she was one of them. Well, I’ve been in the trenches since 1995, and I must point out that Ann Coulter has been missing in action. I’ve never once seen her in here, so I can’t comprehend how she could possibly include herself in this group. I’m a hard-working intelligent pro-life activist, and I’m 100% pro-life – for good reason. I was not only conceived in rape, but nearly aborted at two back-alley abortionists. The only reason I wasn’t killed through a brutal abortion is because I was legally protected. My heroes are those pro-life legislators and activists who were hard-working and intelligent enough to understand that mine was a life worth saving.
Coulter went on to erroneously write that Mourdoch and Akin lost because they had “abortion positions that less than 1 percent of the nation agrees with.” Her figure is way off, and she has totally ignored the fact that their abortion position adheres to the Republican party platform! All she’s doing is further alienating the base. Mitt Romney alienated the base – not only by making the rape exception, but also by his own gaffes, such as when he said, “There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.” Pro-life leaders were left to mop up that mess, from which he never recovered. Many pro-lifers who were already skeptical either voted third-party or stayed home. Three million Republicans stayed home, compared to 2008.http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/11/republican-turnout-in-2012-election-less-than-2008-and-2004/ Making matters worse, Romney ran ads in battleground states suggesting that it’s extreme to be 100% pro-life. How could anyone deny that such ads hurt Senate candidates like Akin in Missouri, Mourdoch in Indiana, and Smith in Pennsylvania, as well as congressional candidates like Koster in Washington and Bachmann in Minnesota? And let’s not forget how the party leadership threw these candidates under the bus – something Democrats do not do to their own.
Additionally, the 1% figure Coulter threw out there is just not even close to being true. Polls in the last few years have consistently shown that the number is between 20 to 24% of Americans who believe abortion should be illegal in cases of rape. The other 31%+ of Americans who are pro-life with exceptions are 99% of the way there, and only need to be nudged another 1%. My experience shows that this is easy to achieve – if you try, just as how my story changed the heart of Gov. Rick Perry during his presidential campaign. And that’s the key. Who has really tried? I know that the number of 100% pro-life Americans would be much higher if the pro-life movement as a whole actually went after this ground. Instead, Coulter is right in pointing out where the effort has been focused – on things like parental notification laws and efforts to ban partial birth abortion. The lives of children conceived in rape are often minimized with the standard dismissive language of: “Well, it’s only 1%.” Why continue to minimize? Why not stand up and really defend our lives? We need to try to gain ground on this issue, by educating the public, by equipping candidates and legislators on how to most effectively respond to the rape question, by making ads with children conceived in rape available for anyone who wishes to utilize them, and by removing rape exceptions from the law, beginning with the Hyde Amendment.
My response to people like Ann Coulter is – WE ARE NOT CANNON FODDER! You do not get to put us out on the front lines and then take a giant step back. The “burning building” analogy fails because you have no interest in working to save all. You do not get to call yourself pro-life by shutting off the water, sending the fire trucks home, while you stand there watching the building burn down with the 1 inside of it. If you want to see who the real extremist is, Ann Coulter, come on Fox News with me, look me in the eyes and tell me how you think my birthmother should have been able to abort me. Tell me that my life was not worthy of protection and that I don’t deserve to be living, and I’ll show you who is the one who is extreme.
Some strategists will suggest that you have to accept rape exceptions in order to get candidates elected and legislation passed. This is untrue – just look at Right to Life of Michigan as the model. They have been a standard-bearer in this cause and have never accepted the rape exception. You can’t get their PAC endorsement if you make the rape exception, and they will not put their stamp of approval on legislation if it has an exception. When they didn’t have the votes to pass the ban on Medicaid funding of abortion without a rape exception, they worked on the exception-legislators to convince them to change their positions. When they still didn’t have the votes, RLM targeted them in their primaries, got them voted out, then passed the ban without exceptions. That’s how you get it done!
Now Right to Life of Michigan has mentored many other state NRLC affiliates to go to this model of being a standard-bearer, maintaining the principle that all are worthy of protection. Since the change on their Board of Directors nearly 12 years ago, Georgia Right to Life has passed more pro-life legislation then they’d ever passed before. They were told at the time by the Republican party leaders that they were dead, irrelevant, and called extremists. Now, every constitutionally-elected official – Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, are all 100% pro-life with no exceptions. The lobbyist for Georgia Right to Life, Dan Becker, wrote a book about it, “Personhood: A Pragmatic Guide to Prolife Victory in the 21st Century and the Return to First Principles in Politics.” www.tkspublications.com Tennessee Right to Life and Alaska Right to Life are other examples of state affiliates who successfully transitioned from the compromising model of accepting the rape exception to being a standard-bearer with no exceptions.
We must not discriminate! Children conceived in rape are surely the most outcast members of our society, being unfairly demonized and portrayed as a “horrible reminder of the rape,” “the rapist’s baby,” “tainting the gene pool,” and even “demon spawn.” This not only affects the pre-born, but also those born under such circumstances. Can you imagine if a law was introduced with an exception in cases of bi-racial rape? I could hear the rationale, “Well, it’s only 1% of 1%,” and “the child would look more like the rapist and would surely be more of a reminder of the rape” – an argument which I’ve actually heard before. There would be a national outcry for such discrimination! Civil rights leaders would be outraged and demand that the exception not only be removed, but that the legislator who introduced it must immediately step down. And yet, half of pro-lifers think nothing of discriminating against children conceived in rape, and it’s wrong!
If we are going to gain ground in this effort to protect unborn children, we must maintain a standard, and we must make more of an effort to educate. I believe that the best people to do so are those of us who have been on the front-lines as pro-life speakers who were conceived in rape, who have been spending our entire adult lives defending our right to life. We’ve heard every question, every challenge, every argument. Why not utilize us? Just to name a few, there is Ryan Bomberger, Susan Jaramillo, and Pam Stenzel. On my website, there are dozens of stories of others conceived in rape and who became pregnant by rape. We’ve publicly shared our stories for a reason – please use them!www.rebeccakiessling.com/Othersconceivedinrape.html I’m partnering with Personhood Education to form Save The 1 – an organization which will implement the strategies necessary to defend the 1%, as well as the 99%. Here are three of our new ads which will be launched soon. www.youtube.com/savethe1child
Back to Ann Coulter’s article – she wrote that “No law is ever going to require a woman to bear the child of her rapist.” I don’t believe that. Laws DID protect children like me and these protections can and should be restored. She went on to add: “Yes, it’s every bit as much a life as an unborn child that is not the product of rape.” Ann, your words speak volumes as to what you really believe. A preborn child is not an “it.” He or she is a life, a human being, a person, a son or a daughter. They have a gender. This is not a mere philosophical or political exercise, but real people’s lives are at stake. When I represented the mother in Michigan’s “frozen embryo” case, the fertility doctors testified at deposition that from one cell, they are literally male and female, and ascertainably so! Just as it says in Genesis, “male and female, He created them.” Using words of gender serve to demonstrate the humanity of these children.
Lastly, Ann Coulter goes on to suggest being 100% pro-life is not wise because too much of a good thing can harm you – like too much iron, or too much sugar in your coffee. I couldn’t help but think of the words of Mother Teresa: “How can you say there are too many children? That’s like saying there are too many flowers.” No offense Ann, but I’d rather heed the words of a godly woman like Mother Teresa than you.
Amen Rebecca! Keep standing up for and speaking the truth! God bless you!
I wanted to take this opportunity to share this new video featuring Rebecca for the upcoming Save the 1 campaign too! Please share this with others and let's all be a voice for the voiceless and help to Save the 1!
Thursday, November 1, 2012
I wanted to share this wonderful video because this is one I believe everyone should watch! This shows the truth behind the "exceptions" rule. Every child matters and abortion is NOT the answer for women who are raped. These are the true faces of those who have lived it and their lives matter! God did have a purpose and a meaning for their lives just like yours and mine and God doesn't make mistakes!
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