An international pro-life speaker will speak at a church in Suffolk this Sunday.

Conceived in rape, Monica Kelsey says she’s against abortion with no exceptions for the rape of the mother and other situations.

“It’s amazing how the more people hear about my story, the more they want me to tell them more,” she said.

Kelsey, who lives in Indiana, always knew she was adopted. Her adoptive parents simply told her that her birth mother was too young to care for her.

“I always felt like I had this fairy tale family waiting for me,” she said. “You can imagine my shock when I learned that wasn’t the case at all.”

At age 37, Kelsey tracked down her birth mother, and she and her husband went to visit her. The woman started telling the couple about when she was brutally raped and left to die at age 17. Kelsey could hardly believe her ears.

“It wasn’t registering,” she said. ‘I wasn’t making the correlation what it had to do with me.”

But when the woman related learning she was pregnant, visiting an illegal abortion clinic in 1972 and changing her mind at the last second, Kelsey understood that her life had been spared by her birth mother’s decision.

“The graphic details she told me of this night is what changed my thinking on abortion,” Kelsey said. “I used to think a woman who was raped should never have to carry a child of a man who forced himself on her.”

The knowledge of how her life began did not automatically jump-start her speaking career, though. There was a lot of pain first.

“I was supposed to have this fairy-tale family waiting for me, and now I have this mess to deal with,” Kelsey said. “I really had to deal with the emotions, because it was starting to consume me. I realized God had put me on this path from the very beginning. God takes our deepest pain, and it becomes a launching path for our greatest calling.”

Through her faith and the support of her husband and adoptive family, she has allowed God to lead her into speaking. At first she spoke only near her hometown but has branched out in the last year or so, even traveling to far-flung locations such as South Africa and Ecuador. After leaving Suffolk, she’ll travel to Washington, D.C., for the annual March for Life on Jan. 22.

This won’t be the first time her feet have landed in Virginia. She spent eight years in the early ‘90s stationed in Norfolk while in the U.S. Navy. She now works part-time as a firefighter and medic.

“It’s amazing how my God has allowed me to save lives during the day and to turn around and try to save babies at night,” she said. “I choose to stand on the front lines defending the life that I once was.”

Kelsey’s appearance will take place during Sunday’s 10 a.m. worship service at Cypress Chapel Christian Church, 1891 Cypress Chapel Road.