Actually, the message really involves killing the victim.

When I was in the Illinois House during the 1970’s, I was Pro-Choice.

I attended the Springfield receptions of those on that side of the abortion issue.

During my twelve years of “remission” from elective office, I often ate dinner with State Rep. Penny Pullen.

After pretty much being fired by the Thompson Administration for helping State Rep. Bernie Pedersen reveal the lie that Thompson’s proposal to raise income taxes (from 2.5% to 4%) was not a one and one-percent tax increase, as I heard on the drive to work, but a massive 60% tax hike, I worked for conservative State Reps.

Pullen was the leader of the Pro-Life legislators.

We discussed the topic, usually at the Pasta House.

She didn’t press the issue.

I’d periodically ask a question and she’d answer it.

At one point, I asked the justification for banning abortion of conceptions resulting from rape.

“Do you know any other crime where the victim is killed?” she replied.

That bored into my head, finally convincing me of the morality of her position.

I was working in Pullen’s Capitol office when Julie Makimaa walked in.

She revealed her birth was the result of her mother’s having been raped.

She was living in Springfield because her husband was based there as a pilot on a regional airline.

Makimaa was a featured rally speaker during Ireland’s abortion legalization referendum.

I remember invoking her name during my 1992 interview at the Northwest Herald, where I knew there was no chance I would be endorsed.

The question about my position on rape and abortion was asked in this Year of the Woman.

“You can tell Julie Makimaa she doesn’t have a right to be alive,” I told the Editorial Board, “but I’m not.”

The second young woman I met who was conceived in a rape was from Antioch.

I was manning the McHenry County Right-to-Life booth in 2000.

The young lady was standing in front of the table looking at plaster models of the phases of gestation.

I introduced myself and she told me her mother had been raped, but decided not to have an abortion.

Now comes 2020 congressional candidate Kathy Barnette, whose mother was raped at age 11.

In an interview in the Epoch Times, she explained that being Pro-life Is “not just philosophical, … It’s very personal to me.”

She is alive because her grandmother not allow an abortion.

The article includes this statement from Barnette:

“I think about it often,” she said. “That my egg only came at that one particular time. And reading the Word of God where He says, ‘I knitted you in your mother’s womb,’ where He talks about, before the foundation of the world, ‘I saw you, and I called you’—predestined you—it’s very personal to me. It’s not something that I can read and just pass over.”

She continues,

Because I had nothing to do with how I was conceived, I should not be punished for the behavior and heinous act that was inflicted upon my very young mom.

She is the author of “Nothing to Gain, Everything to Lose, Being Black and Conservative in America.”