An international pro-life speaker and attorney, who is the product of rape, is working to end abortion and the myths that lead some people to make exceptions.
Had abortion been legal at the time she was conceived, Rebecca Kiessling says her birth mother would have terminated the pregnancy. But following her birth and adoption, Kiessling did not learn the complete truth about her past until she was 19 years old and met her biological mother for the first time.
"[She was] happy to meet me; however, she described the horrible details. It was truly a worst-case scenario -- that's how I was conceived," she shares.
After that meeting, Kiessling admits she felt ugly and unwanted, but it made her think about abortion and the people who condone it in cases of rape.
"It's pretty cold-hearted to say to someone like me, 'I think that your mother should have been able to abort you.' I would never say to someone, 'If I had my way, you'd be dead right now.' But that's the reality of it," she laments. "I understand people want to be people of compassion and that they've been misled to think that in order to do so, you have to make the rape exception."
The pro-life speaker decides that mindset is based on three fallacies. The first is that most rape victims would want an abortion, but Kiessling points out that "only about 15 to 25 percent...choose abortion."
The second fallacy is that a rape victim would be better off with an abortion, but the attorney contends, "That couldn't be further from the truth" because having an abortion after being raped makes a woman "four times more likely to die within the next year. They have a high murder rate, higher rate of suicide, domestic violence [and] depression," she reports.
Finally, Kiessling says people are told the child is simply not worth the trouble, but she hopes her story can dispel that myth by helping people understand that "a baby is not the worst thing that could ever happen to a rape victim -- an abortion is."
Contact: Chris Woodward
Source: OneNewsNowDate Published: September 17, 2010
