WASHINGTON, D.C., April 8, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — Texas senator and presidential hopeful Ted Cruz has run as the most prolife candidate, and this week, Cruz once again boldly backed up his prolife credentials.
Fox News' Megyn Kelly conducted an extended interview with Cruz prior to his victory over Trump in the Wisconsin primaries. At one point, Kelly brought up the fact that Cruz believes in the sanctity of innocent human life regardless of the circumstances of conception.
Kelly noted that for some, not allowing abortion in cases of rape or incest “may be a problem in getting behind President Ted Cruz.”
Sen. Cruz answered Kelly by first emphasizing his compassion for rape survivors. “I’ve spent a lot of years in law enforcement,” Cruz explained. “I was the Solicitor General in the state of Texas and I have handled horrific cases of rape… I went before the U.S. Supreme Court and argued in defense of…capital punishment for the very worst child rapists.”
“Rape is a horrific crime against the humanity of a person, and needs to be punished, and punished severely,” Cruz stated, “but at the same time, as horrible as that crime is, I don’t believe it’s the child’s fault.”
Cruz takes the prolife stance that to kill the living, preborn child is unjust, and does not unrape a woman, but rather only answers the violence of rape with the violence of abortion.
“We weep at the crime,” Cruz told Kelly. “We want to do everything we can to prevent the crime on the front end, and to punish the criminal, but I don’t believe it makes sense to blame the child.”
LifeSiteNews sought out individual prolife leaders who themselves were conceived in rape for comment.
Rebecca Kiessling told LifeSiteNews, “I spoke with Senator Cruz by phone over a month ago about messaging on this issue, and I discussed the mistakes made by others,” she said.
“Ted Cruz has the right values to begin with and I'm thankful he recognizes the humanity of those like me, who do not deserve the death penalty for the crimes of our biological fathers,” Kiessling said.
“To say that you are against taking a child's life unless that child happened to be conceived in rape, would imply that the death penalty is the appropriate punishment for that child,” Pam Stenzel told LifeSiteNews. “It implies that the child should pay the ultimate price for the crime of her father.”
“As a woman who was conceived in rape, I am so thankful that my birthmother did not make me pay for that crime, but sacrificed herself to give me life, and then the ultimate gift of my adoptive family,” Ms. Stenzel continued. “She did not repay violence with more violence.”
“As a counselor, I've spent over two decades counseling women in crisis,” Ms. Stenzel explained. “To say that abortion for the victim of rape would heal her, or make the rape go away is patently false.”
“In fact, for most victims of rape who become pregnant as a result and then had an abortion, they will tell you that the abortion was as traumatizing, if not more, than the rape itself,” the prolife counselor said.
Ms. Stenzel concluded, “The only person who benefits from an abortion in the case of rape is the rapist!”
Monica Kelsey is a prolife speaker, and the “product of rape.” “When we talk about the rights of the unborn child, we should never discuss the conception in which that child was conceived by,” she told LifeSiteNews. “The unborn child conceived in rape is just as much of a person as a child conceived with wine and roses.”
“Having an abortion after rape does not un-rape the woman,” Ms. Kelsey explained. “This woman will still have to heal spiritually, emotionally and physically. Having an abortion is not going to change that, and studies show that abortion adds more trauma.”
“I am thankful that in 1972, when my birth mother was brutally attacked and raped and left along the side of the road to die, that there were advocates fighting to keep abortion illegal even in the cases of rape,” Ms. Kelsey concluded. “I pray that our next president sees the value of every person, born and unborn, and fights every day to protect us all!”
MSNBC noted that since the U.S. Supreme Court twin rulings Roe v Wade and Doe v Bolton in 1973 that legalized abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy for any reason, the Republican ticket has officially been prolife, but has always supported a rape exception. Should Sen. Cruz win the Republican nomination, he would be the first consistently prolife presidential candidate in the history of the republic.
Correction: This article originally misquoted Megyn Kelly as saying that she might not get behind Cruz because he opposes exceptions. However, she was actually referring to someone else.