More than 40 students gathered last night in Jimenez Hall to hear a lecture by pro-life activist Rebecca Kiessling, whose message centered on whether rape is an acceptable reason for abortion.

According to Kiessling, who was conceived in the violent rape of her birth mother in the late 1960s and speaks against abortion at 50 to 70 universities and colleges each year, the answer is no.

“I just know there was a plan for my life from the time I was conceived,” said Kiessling, a Michigan lawyer and public speaker since 1995. “I have a purpose.”

The leaders of Students for Life, the campus pro-life organization that invited Kiessling, said they invited her to speak after hearing she was going to be in the area to speak at George Washington University.

“We thought it would be a good idea to get another side of the abortion issue onto campus,” said Achieng Ragwar, president of Students for Life. “As long as people think about what [Kiessling] talked about and internalize it, that’s all that matters to me.”

Kiessling was conceived when a serial rapist in the Detroit area raped her birth mother at knifepoint, and was born in 1969 – prior to the landmark Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion. Adopted at an early age, Kiessling was unaware of that information until she was 18 and petitioned for information about her parents. The information included a long list of details about her mother, but only listed her father as “Caucasian and of large build.”

“I was like, ‘That sounds like a police description,'” Kiessling said.

When Kiessling was finally able to contact her birth mother some time later, she was extremely troubled by what her mother said.

“She told me that if abortion had been legal, she would have aborted me,” Kiessling said.

Her birth mother had attempted to abort illegally twice, but had once backed out because of horrible conditions of the back-alley facility she was taken to and was prevented from following through the second time by a massive snowstorm.

Kiessling felt “devalued” when she learned of her mother’s attempts, and that all the arguments she had heard in her life supporting abortion in the case of rape suddenly put the value of her life into question.

“It was as if I could hear the echoes of all those people that would say, ‘Oh, except for in cases of rape, right?’ or ‘Oh, especially in cases of rape!'” Kiessling said.

Despite a hurtful first meeting, Kiessling’s relationship with her birth mother has grown, and her birth mother now considers her a “blessing” in her life. Currently pregnant and a married mother of four children, Kiessling writes and practices law to combat abortion, taking on pro bono cases for women in pregnancy crisis situations.

Though most of the students in the audience last night were pro-life, a handful of students asked Kiessling questions that challenged her stance on abortion.

Freshman government and politics major Ndubuisi Okeh, who is pro-choice, said he attended the lecture because he wanted to see what someone from the pro-life movement had to say.

“I think the lecture was very interesting from a person who has been adopted and was [almost] aborted twice by her own mother,” Okeh said, “but I’m still pro-choice.”

During the lecture, Kiessling was asked about her stance on various political issues, including the war in Iraq, the death penalty and same-sex marriage. She did, however, keep her lecture focused on the abortion issue.

On other campuses, Kiessling said she has met harsh criticism. Once, on a poster with her picture on it that read “Do I deserve the death penalty?” students wrote “yes.”

Still, Kiessling said she enjoys speaking on college campuses, and that she comes because she is asked to and wants to share her story. The issue of abortion, and especially the “exception” people make for children of rape to be aborted, Kiessling said, is extremely personal to her because it questions whether her life is worth anything.

“I may not have looked the same at four months old or four days old, but that was still undeniably me,” Kiessling said. “[My life] has nothing to do with luck. It has to do with decisions people make.”

Contact reporter Kevin Rector at rectordbk@umd.edu.