On May 4, 2018, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the Heartbeat Bill into law which would protect unborn children who have a detectable heartbeat, except “when the abortion is medically necessary” and defines “medically necessary” as cases of rape, incest and fetal abnormality, making the abortion provider the sole arbiter of these determinations. These exceptions were surprisingly added — allegedly because certain legislators in the House would not sign the bill without exceptions.
Save The 1 is a global pro-life organization of over 600 of us who were conceived in rape, incest or sex trafficking and mothers who became pregnant by rape, incest or sex trafficking who are either raising their children, birth mothers, miscarried, or post-abortive and mourn the loss of their children. Additionally, we have hundreds who were told by physicians to abort due to a pre-natal diagnosis, along with their children who were targeted by doctors. We specialize in defending all of the so-called “hard cases” in the abortion debate through sharing our personal stories, and we additionally act as a support network. The deadly discrimination contained in the exceptions within the Iowa Heartbeat Law hurts us — because our hearts beat too!One of our members — a mother from rape, testified before a Senate hearing on this bill, which was originally introduced without exceptions. I testified a year earlier on a life-at-conception bill. We are grateful to the Iowa Coalition for Life — a coalition of the major pro-life organizations in Iowa who brought us in to testify and who vigorously opposed the exceptions. When I heard of the exceptions being added I was pained.
We discussed what our response as an organization should be. We could cooperate in order that we may have a “seat at the table” and be invited back to Iowa to speak and to testify again on a future bill. But to what end? To have another viral video which ultimately is rendered ineffective in gaining any protection for us and our children? Do we want to be popular, or protected?
Others would like for us to roll over and play dead. Sometimes it feels like the game is fixed — like this is the Harlem Globetrotters and we are merely the Washington Generals. We aren’t supposed to cry foul when our players are thrown to the ground. Politically, many are quite used to us being the sacrificial lamb, and we are supposed to somehow be understanding and cooperative as we are lead to slaughter.
We are told, “It’s nothing against you personally,” but we are persons, the attack on our very right to life could not possibly be more personal, and of course we will take it personally!
If it were just us who have already been born and merely a matter of our feelings being hurt, perhaps we could somehow “let it go,” but there are others who are yet at risk, who are being targeted for killing, who are just as deserving of protection as any of us, and so, we are fighting back.
Planned Parenthood of the Heartland recently filed a lawsuit against the state of Iowa, and we are now filing a motion to intervene as necessary third party intervenors “of right” since the current Plaintiff, Planned Parenthood, clearly will not argue on behalf of our interests. The exceptions within the Iowa Fetal Heartbeat law violate our fundamental right to life, depriving us of due process and equal protection under both the Iowa and U.S. constitutions. Thankfully, there is a severability clause in the legislation so that the offending provisions can be severed and the remainder of the law upheld. We have three attorneys representing Save The 1: Erin Mersino — a pro-life constitutional law attorney from Michigan with the Great Lakes Justice Center, Eric Borseth — an attorney from Iowa and a board member of Personhood Iowa, and myself.
As a pro-life attorney, this is why I went to law school. While attending Wayne State law school, I wrote what has been for decades the #1-ranked philosophical abortion essay, “The Right of the Unborn Child Not to be Unjustly Killed — a philosophy of rights approach.” If I can’t defend my own right to life in court, then what is the point of being a pro-life attorney? What is the point of being alive? Just to be selfish and live my life without caring about others who are yet at risk? I was protected by Michigan law when my birth mother sought to kill me at two illegal abortions. As a rape victim, she was not offered any help or hope — just abortion. My life was spared for a purpose, and for such a time as this I will use my life, my talents, my expertise and law degree to save others.
The discriminatory language in the Iowa Heartbeat law defines “medically necessary” as cases in which:
a. The pregnancy which is the result of a rape which is reported within forty-five days of the incident to a law enforcement agency or to a public or private health agency which may include a family physician.
b. The pregnancy is the result of incest which is reported within one hundred forty days of the incident to a law enforcement agency or to a public or private health agency which may include a family physician.
c. Any spontaneous abortion, commonly known as a miscarriage, if not all of the products of conception are expelled.
d. The attending physician certifies that the fetus has a fetal abnormality that in the physician’s reasonable medical judgment is incompatible with life.
Interestingly, among the bill’s definitions, rape, incest, fetal abnormality and incompatible with life are not included or even cross-referenced with other sections of the Iowa code, as other definitions are cross-referenced. So the abortion providers get to decide what they deem to qualify as rape, incest and incompatible with life.
The rape, incest and fetal abnormality exceptions are based upon a fabrication that aborting these unborn children is “medically necessary.” Not one witness testified in the Senate hearing as to such a medical necessity. This language was added to appease state representatives in the House who said they would not approve the bill without language that excludes these children from protection. In other words, the legislative intent was that they believed it was politically necessary – not medically necessary, if they were being honest. The language not only excludes innocent children from protection, doing so under a faulty premise, but really was intended merely to protect certain politicians and nothing to do with protecting pregnant mothers.
The rape, incest and fetal abnormality exceptions are based upon a fabrication that aborting these unborn children is “medically necessary.” Not one witness testified in the Senate hearing as to such a medical necessity. This language was added to appease state representatives in the House who said they would not approve the bill without language that excludes these children from protection. In other words, the legislative intent was that they believed it was politically necessary – not medically necessary, if they were being honest. The language not only excludes innocent children from protection, doing so under a faulty premise, but really was intended merely to protect certain politicians and nothing to do with protecting pregnant mothers.
The abortion physician is given the power to decide whether the unborn child has a fetal abnormality and whether the living unborn child with a detectable heartbeat is somehow “incompatible with life.” These preborn children are actually disabled children, and as such, should be protected under the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Additionally, and equally as troubling, the report of the rape and/or incest merely needs to be made to the “public or private health agency” – in other words, to the abortion clinic. So the abortion clinic becomes the sole arbiter of whether a woman was raped and whether her child is to suffer the death penalty for the alleged crimes of his or her biological father, with no guidelines provided within the legislation. This clearly lacks due process and fails to provide equal protection.
The third prong of the exceptions doesn’t even make sense at all, because the law only applies when there is a fetal heartbeat. So how could this possibly be a spontaneous abortion situation when there’s a beating heart? In so many respects, the exception provisions are extremely poorly written law.
The targeting of our people groups for exclusion of protection, and in fact, for state-approved killing is clearly discriminatory. The sting of this discrimination not only affects every unborn child who is deemed to fit into these legislative categories of rape, incest or fetal abnormality, but is lifelong – affecting every person born who was conceived in rape or given a challenging pre-natal diagnosis by a physician. Additionally, it causes anguish to the mothers who became pregnant by rape or who were told by doctors to abort. They grieve at how their children are so quickly devalued by politicians and within the law.
Permitting abortion for rape, incest and fetal abnormalities sends a message to our people groups that our lives are worth less than anyone else’s. Imagine having an exception in cases of Asian babies, Jewish babies, or left-handed babies. The message sent is that these people are not worthy of living and did not deserve to be protected like everyone else. There would be an international outcry if such discrimination against these other people groups were even proposed. Yet, it is the same for us, and we feel the sting of such hatred against or apathy toward our lives.
The rape survivor mothers and those told by doctors to abort grieve how their children are systematically targeted and devalued. The rape victim mothers are not believed they were raped because they didn’t abort and because they actually love their children.
The rape survivor mothers and those told by doctors to abort grieve how their children are systematically targeted and devalued. The rape victim mothers are not believed they were raped because they didn’t abort and because they actually love their children.
We appreciate concern for pregnant rape victims, but they are four times more likely to die within the next year after an abortion, as opposed to giving birth. In Dr. David Reardon’s book, Victims andVictors: Speaking Out About Their Pregnancies, Abortions and Children ResultingFrom Sexual Assault, he cites the research done on the subject. After an abortion, rape victims have higher rates of murder, suicide, drug overdose, etc.. Rapists, child molesters and sex traffickers love abortion, which destroys the evidence and enables them to continue perpetrating. Sexual predators depend upon abortion clinics because the abortion protects them – not the pregnant rape victim.
Tragically, it is at times a girl’s own mother who has been either trafficking her or leaving her unprotected. It is always the baby who exposes the rape, who delivers the pregnant mother out of the abusive situation, protecting her and bringing her healing. If the legislators truly care about rape victims, then they must protect her from the rapist and from the abortion, and not the baby! Her baby is not the enemy, despite what the legislated exceptions suggest.
In regards to a diagnosis of “incompatible with life” – it is impossible to be such when you are still living. Physicians who peddle abortion are truly the ones with fatal heart defects, often failing to treat the children of parents who refused to abort. A eugenics mentality becomes pervasive when you allow abortion. For parents who are told by doctors to abort, the pressure is tremendous – and not just during the pregnancy, but after the child is born when doctors often refuse to treat their disabled child.
The purpose of the Americans with Disabilities Act is to guaranty that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else. The ADA gives civil rights protections to individuals with disabilities similar to those provided to individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, age, and religion. Accordingly, as a suspect class, the offending provisions against disabled children within the Iowa Heartbeat Bill should be subject to strict scrutiny.
The Iowa Heartbeat bill’s bewildering exceptions legislate extreme and inexplicable hatred toward disabled children in the womb, as well as those conceived in rape or incest. Prenatal testing — instead of being used to treat and heal — is used for search and destroy missions for those with medically identifiable disabilities. Iowa legislators have now authorized doctors to commit genocide against an entire people group, decreasing their voices and representation within society.
This deliberate targeting and killing of our people groups also results in doubt being cast upon rape victims for not aborting “like a true rape victim would”, and the “blaming” of parents for not aborting their disabled children who are seen within much of the medical community as a burden on the health care system – much like the Nazi regime which employed the medical designation of “lebensunwertes leben” (“life unworthy of life”), referring to the disabled as “useless eaters.”
Using terminology such as “fetal abnormality” or “incompatible with life“ as classifications for children with disability is deceiving and treacherous treatment from a government which claims its citizens have equal protection under the law. Born children and adults are treated by some physicians as “incompatible with life,” and doctors and hospitals point to “medical futility policies” in order to justify discrimination against these disabled individuals. This deadly eugenics is alive and well today in the United States, and now codified in Iowa by the exceptions within this new law.
Physicians’ predictions are not medical certainty and denying the right to life and equal protection to entire groups of disabled children based on an abortion doctor’s best guess is not medical science. Bias and arrogance of those who wish to promote biological superiority through the destruction of disabled children in the womb brings new meaning to the words biological warfare.
A child’s God-given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness should never be denied because of his or her disability or circumstances of conception. His or her value is not based on what he or she is able to do or the behavior of his or her parents; rather, it is based on his or her humanity and that the child has been endowed by his or her Creator with these inalienable rights.
A child’s God-given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness should never be denied because of his or her disability or circumstances of conception. His or her value is not based on what he or she is able to do or the behavior of his or her parents; rather, it is based on his or her humanity and that the child has been endowed by his or her Creator with these inalienable rights.
We’ve had parents within our organization who refused to abort and were told by doctors:
“The only further testing you will receive is an autopsy,”
“If your child is born not breathing, we won’t resuscitate,” and
“Your child has already outlived her life expectancy.”
Some parents have endured others looking at their disabled child in their arms and asking, “Didn’t you get any pre-natal testing?”
The clear expectation and even obligation is to abort. The Iowa legislature has now codified this deadly discrimination.
Since the government has not done its duty to protect disabled children in the womb, they are also targeted after leaving the womb. Many children have medical treatments withheld and denied leading to their death simply because they have a disability.
Children conceived in rape are often called dehumanizing names such as:
“Demon seed,” “evil seed,” “horrible reminder,” “rapist’s child” (an insult to every rape victim mother who knows that this is her child,) “monster’s child,” “demon spawn,” “Satan’s child,” “tainting the gene pool,” and on and on. The exceptions within the Iowa Fetal Heartbeat law suggest there is something inherently different about the child conceived in rape that they would be unworthy of protection. To legislate that aborting us is “medically necessary” further suggests that we are somehow medically harming our mothers — furthering the notion that we are somehow the ones raping our mothers. But we are entirely innocent and we plead our innocence.
While some states like Michigan, Georgia and Nebraska do not have a single rape exception within the law, there are other jurisdictions where the child conceived in rape is singled-out and systematically targeted for extermination. This lack of equal protection undeniably feeds into the discrimination within the culture. It codifies hatred, fear and prejudice against an innocent child.
A civilized nation must protect the lives of the innocent and disabled child, not target them for extermination and codify hatred. It is barbaric to punish an innocent child for someone else’s crime. The legislature should focus on punishing rapists, not babies and the Court must focus on protecting lives of the innocent and not the careers of politicians or interests of the abortion industry. More violence does not bring healing, but only more pain, more destruction and a less empathetic society.
Given that there was no testimony before the Iowa legislature from physicians or expert witnesses to suggest that denying equal protection and due process for our people groups is somehow a “medical necessity,” it is impossible for the state to claim even a rational basis for the violation of the most fundamental right. For the disabled unborn child, the state cannot claim any sort of governmental interest in codifying eugenics, and certainly not a compelling governmental interest. Assuming medical necessity based upon faulty assumptions is deadly, and must not stand as a basis for violating the right to life and equal protection of the laws.
As far as we know, this is the first time in the U.S. and even globally that a group of people like us has defended our own right to life in court. To every legislator nationwide who wants to target our people group within pro-life legislation: we are united, we have a voice, and we will fight back!
BIO: Rebecca Kiessling, conceived in rape, is a pro-life attorney, international pro-life
speaker, wife and mother of 5. She is the president and founder of Save The 1.
Brad and Jesi Smith, Save The 1 pro-life speakers contributed. Their youngest daughter, Faith, was born with Trisomy 18. They were behind the Good Faith Medical Act passed in Michigan — the first of its kind in the nation.
