Republican Congressman Steve King says he wishes he had phrased a recent statement about abortion differently, but he says the statement “was objectively honest and accurate.” Last week, King told a central Iowa group that given “all the rape and pillage” over the centuries, there might not be any population of the world left if all the “products of rape and incest” were removed from “all the family trees.”

King was joined at Friday’s news conference by a handful of people who, like King, support an abortion ban without exceptions for rape and incest. “Save the One” president Rebecca Kiesling thanked King for his comments and accused King’s critics of classifying those who are conceived in rape as “sub-human.”