The rape exception sits at the center of almost every abortion debate in Congress and in state legislatures. Lawmakers on both sides cite it as the clearest moral justification for legal abortion. The people in Live Action's Face to Face series have a different view—and they are speaking from experience that most legislators do not have.
Kathleen Folan was 20 years old, a college junior attending daily Mass, when a male acquaintance offered her his apartment for the night after she was locked out of her own. He put her in his bed and said he would sleep on the couch. He raped her instead. Folan told no one. "I was so mortified," she said. A month later, after persistent nausea, her roommate suggested she take a pregnancy test. It was positive.
"My well-planned life flashed before me," Folan said. "But in the same moment, I knew that God had entrusted this beautiful life to me, for whatever reason." She chose open adoption. Her son was raised by his adoptive family while Folan remained in contact throughout his life. Their extended families, she said, remain close. "A lot of beauty came out of a lot of darkness," she said. "And I never imagined when I looked at that pregnancy test that it could have turned out so beautifully."
Lianna Rebolledo's situation was more severe. She was 12 years old when she was abducted, raped and beaten badly enough that her attackers left her for dead. Her face was cut. The people around her, she said, told her her life was ruined, that no one would want her. "When I was 12, I believed that they were right," Rebolledo said. "So I wanted to take my life. And I tried to take my life." While recovering in the hospital from the suicide attempt, she learned she was pregnant. A doctor told her she did not have to live with the consequences and that abortion was legal.
Rebolledo refused. "The only thing that crossed my mind was, I'm having a little person, I'm going to have a baby, and this baby's only mine," she said.
Mark Roepke always knew he was adopted. He later learned he was the son of a 14-year-old girl who became pregnant after being raped at a Fourth of July party in South Dakota. When Roepke first spoke publicly about being conceived in rape, he was called an abomination. The label is one he has spent years pushing back against publicly.
Jennifer Lawton learned her own story in a single sentence. She was talking with her mother about rape and abortion when she said she did not know what she would do in that situation. Her mother looked at her and said, "Well, honey, you were conceived in rape. Your birth mom was raped." Lawton said time froze. "I heard this voice in the back of my head telling me, you're a product of evil. You were never meant to be," she said. She described struggling for years with the idea that something was wrong with her because of how she was conceived.
Another woman in the series, whose daughter was conceived after she was raped, said the argument that abortion punishes the rapist misses the point entirely. "My baby didn't deserve to be punished for the rape because my baby didn't have anything to do with that," she said. Her daughter, she said, "wasn't lower class or second class because of how she was conceived; she was just like any other human being, and she didn't deserve less than anyone else." She added: "Even with all the suffering and pain, I would go through that again just to know my daughter."
A daughter conceived in rape, speaking alongside her mother, pushed back directly on the political framing she hears from lawmakers. "All the lawmakers are telling our story," she said, "and you know, 'these are unwanted children,' and I'm tired of being told that. It's exhausting." She said accepting her story has become a source of strength. "If I could choose between being conceived by a rapist or not being born, I'll take my conception story."
The rape exception is not a fringe position. In polls conducted during the 2022 and 2024 election cycles, large majorities of Americans—including many who describe themselves as pro-life—said they support legal abortion in cases of rape. Republican legislators in several states wrote rape exceptions into their abortion restriction bills specifically to make those laws more politically durable. The people in this series are arguing, from their own lives, that the exception rests on a premise they reject: that a child conceived in rape is categorically different from any other child.
Live Action, the anti-abortion advocacy group that produced the Face to Face series, frames the panel as testimony against that premise. The organization does not hold elected office and has no vote in Congress. But the stories its subjects tell are the kind that have shaped floor speeches, committee testimony and state legislative hearings for years. Whether lawmakers treat this testimony as a reason to narrow or eliminate rape exceptions—or dismiss it as the experience of a minority—is a question that state legislatures and Congress have not finished answering.
