Questions and answers with Rebecca Wasser Kiessling

One of the featured speaker's at this October's Creating a Culture of Life conference in Toronto will be Rebecca Wasser Kiessling, an attorney, mother and pro-life speaker from Rochester Hills, Mich., who serves on the advisory boards of Michigan Nurses for Life and the Crossroads Pregnancy Centre.

Kiessling was adopted as an infant after being conceived in a rape at knifepoint by a serial rapist. She has told her story to media outlets including CNN, Good Morning America, Glamour magazine and Marie Claire magazine. She currently serves as "poster woman" for Feminists for Life's campaign against exceptions for rape and incest in laws restricting abortion. She spoke to The Interim recently by telephone.

The Interim: You have a very interesting story behind your very existence. Perhaps you can recount it for us, from the beginning.

Kiessling: I was adopted into a family, who told me at a very young age that I was adopted. I had a curiosity from the get-go ... I was told I had to wait until I was 18, and then I'd be able to get the information and be able to meet (my biological mother). I turned 18 and found out it wasn't that easy. But I did go ahead and petition for what is called non-identifying information.

When it arrived, it had everything you could imagine about my birth mother ... And then for my father, it said he was Caucasian and of large build. I thought, "That sounds like a police description" ... I called up my caseworker and asked her, "Was my mom raped?" And she said, "Yeah. I didn't want to tell you." I was devastated. I remember feeling so ugly and so unwanted ... I remember thinking, "Who would ever love me? Who is ever going to want to marry me, because I've got these bad genes" ... It was very difficult to reconcile this with my life and what this meant about who I was.

I then thought about the issue of abortion and realized that I fit into that category of prime target for abortion. There were people all over the world standing in judgement against me - they were so quick to dismiss my life because of how I was conceived.

Then I thought about my birth mother and thought that she must hate me. It had to be absolutely the worst thing that ever happened to her in her life. She would never want to meet me. She probably wanted to abort me.

I had it all worked out in my head and thought that if maybe I could meet her and that maybe there was some kind of mistake - that this was not how I was conceived - then maybe I could feel good about myself and I wouldn't have to feel as if I was a target. I didn't want to be part of that classification.

I thought that if I could just make myself attractive and successful, and find a relationship where someone would love me, then I'd have value ... I bought into that and made some bad choices in my life because of it. Then the Lord called me back several years later.

In the meantime, I was able to meet my birth mother and she wanted to meet me ... She was only 4´10´´ and had headed to the grocery store at night. She was a single mom raising an 11-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter ... He jumped out of the bushes with a knife, abducted her, dragged her to a field, split open her clothes with a knife and brutally raped her in every way possible. That's how I was conceived. That was so hard to hear for many reasons ...

The Interim: How did this affect you when you learned of it? You mentioned you sort of sought to prove your value in different ways.

Kiessling: (My biological mother) sent me a letter after we spoke on the phone and before meeting in person. I was going to college out of state at the time ... It was all my dreams come true. It began the healing process. Meeting her was great.

But I ended up having another low after a few more weeks ... I asked her about abortion, and she told me that if abortion had been legal, she would have aborted. And I asked, "You don't mean it if you had to do it all over again, right?" And she said, "No ..."

Despite the horror of her saying that to me, I chose to maintain a relationship with her and to honour her for the role God chose for her as my birth mother. I found out later that she had actually gone to two back-alley abortionists and that I was almost aborted. That just floored me ... It was like realizing you had a near-death experience, but it all happened behind your back.

The Interim: Following this, you became an attorney and active in pro-life related work. Can you tell me about that a little?

Kiessling: As I mentioned, I ended up making some bad choices and got into an abusive relationship while I was in law school. My jaw was broken, he stalked me and terribly abused me. That's when I hit rock bottom, but then the Lord called me back to Him. God used that experience with domestic violence to give me a heart for families in crisis so that I ended up becoming a family law attorney ... I was able to witness to people every single day in my practice.

I started having women come into my office who were pregnant and were being coerced into aborting by their boyfriend, parents or husband ... A lot of women are terrorized into aborting. So much for free choice. There are even societal pressures to abort.

So I started representing these women for free, if it meant they would go ahead and give birth to their children. So I have photos of babies that God saved from abortion through my law practice. It's the greatest high in the world to know that this world is going to be different because these children are here.

As if that wasn't enough, God sent me four cases that were on the cover of the Detroit Free Press and made national and international news ... I represented a woman who was sued for not aborting in a breach of contract. He said he paid her $500 and she failed to have an abortion, so he shouldn't pay child support .

Then I represented the family of a woman who was raped in a group home. She had the mental capacities of a two-year-old. There was a coverup of the rape and a court order for the baby's abortion behind her family's back ... The child is doing great now. The family does have custody of the child and I got the woman moved out of that group home so she has more one-on-one care ...

I represented a mother in Michigan in a frozen-embryo case. The father wanted them destroyed, the mother wanted to give them an opportunity to be born ...

The last one I stepped in and argued was on behalf of an unborn child from a 12-year- old girl's rape-incest, late-term abortion case. She was seven months pregnant. They allowed her family to take her out of state to Kansas and "Tiller the Killer" ... A case like that is incredibly hard ...

The Interim: Another important thing you do is speak. You've appeared in many media and so on. What kind of reactions do you get from people when they hear your story?

Kiessling: First of all, I closed my law practice to become a full-time mom. That means my son comes all over the country with me. He's been on tour with me basically since he was three weeks old. He does very well with it.

Usually, I speak to a favourable audience - banquets, fundraisers, rallies, etc. - where I'm speaking to pro-lifers. But often, there are people who make exceptions for rape. I have had those people come up to me afterwards and tell me I made them change their minds ... That's a tremendous blessing, to be able to hear that from somebody. You don't always get feedback like that.

The Interim: For those politicians who believe in rape and incest exceptions, how can we try to change their thinking?

Kiessling: Invite them to conferences and banquets where they can hear our stories. I tell people, "Look, whenever you identify yourself as being pro-choice or are willing to make an exception for rape and incest, what that translates into is you being able to stand before me, look me in the eye and say, 'I think your mother should have been able to abort you.'"

That's a really powerful statement. I would never say to someone, "If I had my way, you'd be dead right now." But that is the reality with which I live. People don't think about it. They don't put a face to the issue. It's a concept they can sweep under the rug. I hope I can help put a face on this issue.

I challenge people to be consistent. Is this really what they believe in? ... They think they're being compassionate. I don't think there's anything compassionate about it. It's pretty cold-hearted from where I stand ... People need to be challenged on that.

The Interim: Do you have any plans for the future and things you'd like to do from here on in?

Kiessling: I do a lot speaking. I average about 50 speaking engagements a year, which includes schools, churches and whatnot. I plan to homeschool. I'm joining up with a homeschool co-op and I'll be teaching three and four years olds tumbling, dance and stretch. It's part of their fine arts co-op. I'm really looking forward to that.