Sam Brownback Says Abortion Shouldn’t Be Allowed in Rape, Incest Cases 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 11, 2007
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Sam Brownback, the Kansas senator, is widely considered by many in the pro-life community to be one of the strongest pro-life candidates seeking the Republican nomination for president. He proved his pro-life bona fides again over the weekend when he said he opposed abortion in cases of rape or incest.
Brownback’s comments came during the National Catholic Men’s Conference.
He said that encouraging a woman who has been a victim of sexual abuse to have an abortion doesn’t address the problems she faces as a result of the rape and does nothing to prosecute the rapist.
"Rape is terrible. Rape is awful. Is it made any better by killing an innocent child? Does it solve the problem for the woman that’s been raped?" Brownback said, according to an AP report.
"We need to protect innocent life. Period," he added, which brought the crowd of 500 people to its feet.
Michael Scheuren of St. Petersburg Beach, Florida, attended the conference and told the Associated Press he appreciated Brownback’s comments. He said he was upset by some politicians like GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani who are Catholic and do not align themselves with the Church’s teachings on abortion.
"I think if a politician’s going to run for office claiming to be Catholic, they need to ascribe to everything that the Catholic church teaches," he said.
Michigan attorney Rebecca Kiessling knows firsthand about the potential impact of abortion on unborn children conceived through rape.
"I was adopted nearly from birth. At 18, I learned that I was conceived out of a brutal rape at knife-point by a serial rapist," she says.
"Like most people, I’d never considered that abortion applied to my life, but once I received this information, all of a sudden I realized that, not only does it apply to my life, but it has to do with my very existence," she added.
Kiessling feels the pain of what could have happened to her every time she hears someone say abortion should be allowed in such cases.
"All these people are out there who don’t even know me, but are standing in judgment of my life, so quick to dismiss it just because of how I was conceived," she says.
