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Washington • An emotional Mia Love wiped away tears as she told a large anti-abortion rally here that her struggling parents 41 years ago had a choice of whether to abort her but instead decided on life.
The Utah congresswoman, whose parents immigrated from Haiti, said it was "inconvenient" for her parents to find out they were pregnant with their third child while living in New York City, and both had to work multiple jobs to make ends meet.
"It would have been easier for them to have an abortion," she said. "This couple had a choice to make: protect the life of their child or always wonder what might have been."
Abortion was legal in 1975, when Love was born, two years after the Supreme Court made it the law of the land.
Friday's March for Life event drew thousands to the National Mall in protest of that high court decision, as it has each year for two generations.
"Every time we kill a child through abortion, we kill potential," Love told the crowd, tears streaming down her face. "Every time we kill a child, we — all of us — suffer. We lose a little of ourselves and a lot of our future."
It's not the first time Love has broken down when discussing abortion. She cried on Fox News' Lou Dobbs program in August 2015 when talking about cutting funding for Planned Parenthood.
"I get a little bit emotional just thinking about it," she said then.
Love sits on the House Select Investigative Committee on Infant Lives, a panel formed after videos leaked of Planned Parenthood officials talking about reimbursements for parts of aborted fetus. U.S. law allows for recovery of costs associated with such transactions, though it bans the selling of body parts.
Love was preceded on stage by Vice President Mike Pence, who hailed the election of anti-abortion majorities in Congress and "a president who I proudly say stands for the right to life."
President Donald Trump has promised to name anti-abortion judges and calls himself "pro-life," though, in the late 1990s, he described himself "very pro-choice."
Pence said the Supreme Court turned away from the country's founding ideals when it struck down an abortion ban in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, but that times are changing.
"Because of all of you, and the many more who stand with us in marches just like this across this nation," Pence said, "life is winning in America again."
For her part, Love — greeted by one crowd member who yelled, "We love you, Mia!" — peppered her remarks with the point that, as a country, "We no longer settle for 'what might have been' and instead embrace the possibilities of the life that is and is to come."
About 41 years ago, she said, her parents made the decision that opened the future to the "dreams that baby would bring. … I am certain that this couple never could have conceived that that child would be elected to the United States House of Representatives as the very first black Republican woman ever elected to Congress. But more than that, they would have never dreamed that that child would grow up to fight for all children, especially for those yet to be born."