Recently, a feminist who advocates for the rape exception and opposes the criminalization of abortion — yet has enjoyed a 
presence within the pro-life movement — posted a video and wrote an op-ed for a Dallas newspaper justifying voting for a pro-abortion Democrat for U.S. Senate, saying she broke the pro-life rule to only vote Republican. Since Destiny welcomed a cordial dialogue, and since the video and article have both been disseminated within pro-life circles, I will address this important issue.
I say “pro-abortion” as opposed to “pro-choice” because Beto O’Rourke has received a 100% approval rating from Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and is endorsed by NARAL Prochoice America (National Abortion Rights Action League) and Planned Parenthood. You can’t get their PAC endorsements unless you support abortion on demand for any reason throughout the pregnancy, unrestricted, at taxpayer expense, and unless you oppose pro-life efforts to help pregnant women like sidewalk counseling and pregnancy resource centers. He voted against the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, against the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, against legislation that would protect medical professionals from being forced to participate in abortions, voted for taxpayer funding of abortion, and voted to abolish all regulations on abortion. So yeah – pro-abortion.
On the other hand, his opponent, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has a 100% pro-life voting record and does not make the rape exception.
But Destiny said that as a feminist, there are other concerns for her. She conceded that “chronologically,” life comes first. However, life doesn’t just come first — it’s a prerequisite to the enjoyment of all other rights. For decades I’ve said this: What good is my right to anything as a woman if I don’t have my right to life? All other rights are worthless without your right to life.
The right to life also outweighs all other rights. Denying one’s right to life is irreversible. That right is irreplaceable. No one can be made whole again when denied this right. Our laws have always recognized this which is why the intentional killing of an innocent person has always carried the greatest penalty.
Defending this right is also paramount when you just look at sheer numbers. No other injustice in America comes close to the annual loss of life of on average more than one million per year due to abortion. So when you are looking at the scales of justice in determining how you will vote, nothing else comes close.
Destiny points to the fact that Republicans haven’t achieved much on the federal level, given that they’ve had control of all of Congress and the Executive Branch. But a huge part of the problem is with pro-choice Republicans in the Senate who have obstructed pro-life legislation and with some wishy-washy legislators who make exceptions and don’t really care about this issue. Ted Cruz is 100% pro-life and a big advocate on this issue.
But I’d like to address the charge against the pro-life movement that we believe you must vote Republican if you are pro-life. No, our loyalty is to the life issue. Decades ago, both political parties were split on the issue of abortion. The Republican party became the party of life when in 1980, the Democrats adopted a pro-abortion party platform and began to bully pro-life Democrats out of the party. They’ve left in droves over this issue.
Even today, 100% pro-life U.S. Congressman Dan Lapinski from Illinois faced a tough primary by Democrats who want to drive him out of the party. If I lived in his District, I’d vote for him – and pro-life voters do! If you identify as a Democrat, the opportunity to make a difference is within the primary, or within a district where there’s a pro-life Democrat running.
In my home state of Michigan, 50% of Democrats in the 1990’s were pro-life. Then in the early 2000’s about 25% of Democrats were pro-life, and endorsed by Right to Life of Michigan’s (RLM) PAC. A few years ago, Michigan Senator Tupac Hunter (D) heard me speak and told me how my conceived in rape story helped reinforce his 100% pro-life stance. He was term-limited out and was the last pro-life Democratic Senator we’ve had.
Since then, there was an RLM PAC-endorsed Democratic State Representative, Brian Elder, but surprised everyone when he denounced his endorsement, then sponsored a bill that would effectively shut down pro-life pregnancy centers who provide free services to abortion-vulnerable women. And now he’s running for a leadership position within the Democratic party. He’d never be allowed as a leader in the Democratic Party unless he dropped his pro-life stance.
A few years back, when Democrats controlled the House in Michigan, you couldn’t get any pro-life legislation out of committee because Democratic leadership doesn’t support it. That’s why so many left the party nationwide!
Though we are a rust-belt state, in Michigan, RLM’s PAC for years has been considered to be the most powerful single-issue PAC. Pro-life voters can rely upon their endorsement and know that all candidates must be 100% pro-life. Besides providing a list of all of their PAC-endorsed candidates, they make it easy to vote pro-life with a personalized pro-life ballot generator.
Let’s take a closer look at the Democrats’ pro-abortion, anti-women record: only two Democrats in the combined Michigan House and Senate voted in favor of the Coercive Abortion Prevention Act in 2016. We see Democrats opposing these measures nationwide to protect women from being coerced into aborting. Why would they oppose this if they aren’t pro-abortion? Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-choice America demand that they oppose it if they want their endorsement because a law protecting women from coercion cuts into their bottom-line and reveals the truth that choice is a fallacy.
Democrats have notoriously opposed bans on sex-selective abortion. How can a feminist vote for someone like that? Every Democrat in the House in Michigan (except for RLM PAC’s then sole-endorsed Democrat) voted against a bill that would allow judges to “score” — for purposes of sentencing – for two victims if a pregnant woman is killed. Why would a feminist vote for those politicians? We’re talking about a “wanted” child where the woman “chose” life. That’s not even arguably pro-choice to oppose these kinds of laws, but pro-abortion Democrats are doing so all over the U.S. to maintain their 100% “pro-choice” approval rating. They value abortion over protecting women and their choice to have their babies.
Only two Democrats in Michigan voted to support the Choose Life license plate which would have helped fund pro-life pregnancy resource centers. Instead, the Democratic party wants to give more money to Planned Parenthood – an organization which covers up rape and protects and enables sex traffickers, child molesters and rapists by destroying the evidence and telling underage girls to lie.
Destiny says that abortion rates will go down with Democrats’ policies which will make abortion “unthinkable.” No, abortion rates go down when you pass pro-life legislation. The highest year for abortions being performed in Michigan was in 1987 – the year I graduated from high school — with 49,098 abortions in Michigan. In 2017 the number was down 45.8% to 26,594 – still unacceptable. 26,594 equals the equivalent of three classrooms full of children aborted every day (85 per day, 6 days per week). The most significant drop was when Michigan banned Medicaid funding of abortion.
Passing the parental consent law in Michigan dramatically dropped the teen abortion rate. In 1985 30% of all abortions were performed on teens. In 2017 only 9% were. In addition, teen sex rates have since dropped – in part, because it’s not so easy to get an abortion behind your parents’ back. So teens are weighing their decision-making better.
Another concern of Destiny’s was the infant mortality rate. Well, surgical abortion is linked to preterm birth which is the biggest cause of infant mortality. So if you have these concerns, that’s all the more reasons to vote pro-life.
And for those of us who are truly concerned with racial injustice, you should be alarmed that 50% of abortions in Michigan were performed on black women in 2017, when they only make up 17% of the population. But they are being targeted by the abortion clinics which are not only located in black neighborhoods, but in Democratic-controlled districts where the authorities are turning a blind eye to the unsanitary conditions in these clinics in which women have endured forced abortions and where many black women have died in Michigan, like Cree Erwin-Sheppard at a Planned Parenthood in 2017, and these four victims at wealthy abortion doctor Alberto Hodari’s clinic in Lathrup Village. It was our pro-life Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette who began investigating these unsanitary clinics and shutting them down.
I previously mentioned that the abortion rate was at it’s highest the year I graduated from high school – 1987. There were two abortion clinics located in my area at the time. Hodari’s clinic was less than a mile from Southfield-Lathrup High School where I attended, and the other is Northland Family Planning, which is still open. It was my peers and their offspring who were preyed upon. These clinics were/are blights within the community. Dead babies were found in dumpsters in Hodari’s clinic in Lathrup Village.
But the evidence of these two killing operations is seen today in the Southfield School District as school after school has been closed due to a plummet in enrollment – not funding. Due to the Headlee Amendment which redistributes funding to poorer / lower performing school districts, the Southfield School District receives far more money per pupil than where I live now, but that doesn’t help their budget when the pupils aren’t there because they were killed in utero. All of my childhood education institutions are gone – Adler Elementary School, Birney Middle School and Southfield-Lathrup High School. They’re all wiped out. These schools weren’t closed due to lack of funding, but due to enrollment cutting in half. The future students were aborted.
Where I live now, there are no abortion clinics and the district had to add an additional high school to accommodate all of the children. They’ve expanded existing elementary schools to make room for the children. It’s simple math – where there are abortion clinics, children die and therefore, so do schools, so do communities, and so do families.
As a young family law attorney, I did a lot of court-appointed paternity work, representing men being sued for paternity. It was disheartening to hear a multitude of my clients repeat what became cliché: “Why should I have to pay child support when she could have had an abortion? All of my other girlfriends had abortions.” These men shirked their responsibilities as fathers because of the legality and availability of abortion. That’s what abortion does. It’s not a choice, but an expectation and it destroys families. It has absolutely devastated the black family. If you care about social justice and inequality, you should be voting pro-life, without exception.
Sadly, many people don’t understand what it means to be pro-life. It’s not that you don’t like abortion or that you think it’s wrong or immoral. There are women going into abortion clinics who don’t like abortion and know it’s wrong, but they’re going through with it anyway. Being pro-life means that you recognize that innocent human beings deserve protection – not that states can decide, not that you want to reduce the number of abortions, not that it’s only about personal responsibility for women who consented to sex. No. Being pro-life means understanding that every preborn child deserves protection without exception. I owe my birth to the law which protected me in Michigan when my birthmother sought to abort me. Legality matters.
I urge you – please vote pro-life!
BIO: Rebecca Kiessling is an attorney, activist and international pro-life speaker and blogger. She’s the founder and president of Save The 1, and a wife and mother of 5 children.
