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WASHINGTON, D.C. — If so-called ‘pro-life’ media personalities, religious leaders, or politicians believe that abortion is wrong except in such cases as rape, then they are not actually pro-life, a panel of persons conceived in rape told an audience at a Washington, DC, conference in a lead-up to the capitol’s annual March for Life. 

“We are all people. Nobody should say we are the exception. Why, I’m innocent. We’re all wonderful people. We’re no different than you sitting out there. Why should we be exceptions,” said one of the panelists named David, who as a young man found out the difficult truth of his beginning. David is now a father of three, and a grandfather. 

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Monica Kelsey, a firefighter and medic who is married with three children, said that people need to know that “our lives matter.” Kelsey, an adopted child, discovered she was conceived in rape after meeting her birthmother when she was in her 20s. 

“Our politicians that make exceptions for our lives, shame on them for telling people they are pro-life. Because, if they can make exceptions for our lives, then they can make exceptions for your lives when you are 99, or when it is convenient for them.”

Kelsey said if someone is a “true pro-life individual,” then they will never make an exception for the life of any child, no matter how they were conceived. 

Conference organizer Juda Myers, the founder of Choices 4 Life, agrees: “Being pro-life with exceptions is just really being ‘pro-choice,’ because if you’re pro-life, it’s life — period — for every unborn child, for everybody.”

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Myers founded the non-profit Choices 4 Life in 2011 to “promote and restore honor and dignity to women and children of rape conception,” her website states.  Myers’ work focuses especially on helping women pregnant with a baby conceived in rape to carry that baby to term and to provide her with support after the baby is born. This is the first time her organization has come to the March for Life. 

Myers told LifeSiteNews in an interview after the event, which took place Tuesday evening at the Renaissance Hotel, that she wants to “end the stigma against the mothers of rape-conceived children.”

“The rapist is the one who deserves the shame and deserves punishment, not the women or their children,” she said.

Myers said that bringing together a panel of rape-conceived persons “puts a face to that rape exception.” 

“These are the faces or real people, real moms who really love their children, and children who really love life.”

“You have to take in this truth, and reevaluate what you used to think,” she said.

The panel took conservative media personality Glenn Beck and religious leader Billy Graham to task for claiming to be pro-life while supporting abortion in cases of rape. 

“My goal in life is to educate Glenn Beck that my life matters,” Kelsey told the audience of about 25 people. 

It doesn’t matter how the child was conceived, the child is still a person and deserves unalienable rights, such as the right to life, one of the panelists said. 

The panelists, some of them who were mothers of rape-conceived children, took to task people who believe that abortion somehow helps relieve the pain and anguish experienced by the raped woman. They made the case that the raped-and-pregnant woman aborting her baby doesn’t erase the rape, but now ads to it the new wound of the mother losing her own child. They said that bearing their children actually made things better for them, because it showed them that good can come out of the most violent and horrible act. Each mother of a rape-conceived child expressed how much they love and cherish them and would not trade them for anything in the world. 

The main message the group is bringing to this year’s march for life is: “End rape exceptions.” Their slogan: “Your exceptions, our lives.” 

Myers told LifeSiteNews that pro-lifers of every stripe need to unequivocally start standing behind rape-conceived persons, whether born or unborn. 

“I really really would like the pro-life groups to get this. Don’t tell me you’re pro-life and than say: ‘I’m sorry, we’re not counting ‘you’ into this game.’ There’s a hypocrisy there that needs to be addressed,” she said.