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Clarification: An earlier edition of this article misquoted Rebecca Kiessling as saying that “women are having abortions because they hate babies”. Instead, she said ”women aren’t having abortions because they hate babies”. The mistake was due to mishearing and has been corrected accordingly.

CONTROVERSIAL PRO-LIFE group Youth Defence has told the Citizens’ Assembly that “sex traffickers and child molesters love abortion” because it “destroys evidence”.

The anti-abortion group’s representative was US citizen Rebecca Kiessling and she told the assembly that she was born as a result of the rape of her mother.

Kiessling told the assembly that ”women aren’t having abortions because they hate babies” but that “every abortion is fear driven”.

Kiessling described abortions as a result of rape as being a punishment to the unborn for the sins of the father and said that:

I did not deserve the death penalty because of my birth father.

Much of Kiessling’s presentation differed from the presentation Youth Defence had submitted to the assembly in advance.

During her presentation, Kiessling claimed that abortion as a result of rape is “yet another traumatic violation”.

“Sex traffickers and child molesters love abortion. It destroys the evidence, it protects and enables them and allows them to continue perpetrating” she said.

Kiessling also provided a graphic description of what she claimed were the conditions in “many of the legal abortion clinics across the United States”.

“Like Dr Gosnell’s ‘house of horrors’ in the Philadelphia where they found body parts and babies all over the place,” she said.

In Youth Defence’s written presentation that was provided to assembly members ahead of Kiessling’s address, the group also detailed what it called “the reality of abortion”.

“The abortionist continues to grasp intestines, spine, heart, lungs, and any other limbs or body parts. The most difficult part of the procedure is usually finding, grasping and crushing the baby’s head,” Youth Defence said, quoting published US doctor Anthony Levatino.

Levatino is also presenting before the Citizens’ Assembly on behalf of Women Hurt. That group represents women who regret their abortions.

Later in her speech, Kiessling told a story of two women who she said were both survivors of rape and who both became pregnant.

Speaking of the woman who had an abortion, she quoted her as saying that she “couldn’t help feeling like a murderer”.

Also speaking before this morning’s session of the Citizens’ Assembly were, Doctors for Life, Doctors for Choice, the Union of Students of Ireland and the National Women’s Council. The Citizens’ Assembly continues this afternoon.

Read: ‘My only thought was if this plane crashes everyone is going to know that I’m pregnant’ >  

Read: Citizens’ Assembly told repealing the Eighth doesn’t necessarily mean a right to abortion >