Kanye West cries during anti-abortion rant at rally for his presidential campaign

Kanye West has broken down in tears during the first rally of his presidential campaign.

West spoke at the Exquis Event Centre in North Charleston, South Carolina today. It was weird on many levels.

He did not bring a microphone, and instead repeatedly told the crowd to “be quiet” while he was talking.

The rapper grew emotional during a monologue on the issue of abortion, revealing that he and his wife Kim Kardashian considered not having their first child, North West.

“In the Bible it says thou shalt not kill,” he said.

“I remember that my girlfriend called me screaming and crying. And I’m just thinking - and at that time I was a rapper, I was out there, I had different girlfriends and everything. And I was like, I want to word this in a way that - hey I don’t give a f***.

“So my girlfriend called me and I just thought to myself, ‘Please don’t tell me I gave Kim Kardashian AIDS.”

Some people in the crowd laughed at the joke. Others groaned.

“Then she said, ‘I’m pregnant.’ I said, ‘Yes!’ Then I said, ‘No.’ I gotta tell you what was in my mind. She was crying,” West continued.

“She said she was pregnant, and for one month, and two months, and three months, we talked about her not having this child. She had the pills in her hand. When you take the pills, and if you take it, the baby’s gone.

“I was sitting up in Paris, and I had my leather pants on. I’m in the apartment where my wife was actually robbed, and I had my laptop up, and I got all my creative ideas - I got my shoes, I got my next album cover, I got all this - and the screen went black and white. And God said, ‘If you f*** with my vision, I’m going to f*** with yours.’

“And I called my wife and she said, ‘We’re gonna have this baby.’ I said, ‘We’re gonna have this child. I know people that are 50 years old that didn’t have children, that have never been able to experience the level of joy that I experienced having a child.

“So even if my wife were to divorce me after this speech, she brought North into the world, even when I didn’t want to. She stood up and she protected that child.

“You know who else protected a child? Who do you think might have protected a child? My mum saved my life. My dad wanted to abort me. My mum saved my life. There would have been no Kanye West, because my dad was too busy!”

At that point West started to cry, and it became difficult to discern much of what he was saying.

“I almost killed my daughter! I almost killed my daughter!” he shouted.

“We love you Kanye!” some members of the crowd shouted back.

That was followed by a string of mostly unintelligible sentences.

“They’re going to run this, they’re going to try to tell you that I’m crazy. The world’s crazy,” West said.

Eventually West reached his point, saying abortion should “always be legal”, but there “should be an option of maximum support”.

His idea, which he called a “maximum increase”, was to give every woman the option of taking a large payment from the federal government to help her raise her child.

He mentioned the policy a couple of times – the first time, the proposed payment was $50,000, and after that it became a million dollars.

“Everybody that has a baby gets a million dollars, or something like that,” he said.

A woman in the crowd took issue with West’s stance on the issue, and caught his attention by repeatedly shouting “No!”.

“Are you saying no?” he asked her, before waving her on stage.

“Calm down, everyone. Calm down! Everyone, quiet,” he said.

West listened for about 10 seconds while the woman spoke to him. She revealed she’d had an abortion, and explained why.

Most of her words were not audible - blame the lack of a microphone for that - but it was clear from her body language that she strongly disagreed with him.

West then interrupted her and embarked on a fresh monologue.

“It takes a village to raise a child. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. It can be grandmothers, it can be friends, it can be people,” he said.

“Society has been set up for single mums to not have a village. How many people have to drive 45 minutes to get to their job?”

He asked for a show of hands. A couple of people in the crowd obliged.

“Do you understand what you guys are talking - you guys might want to say, ‘F*** you Kanye.’ Do you realise that I am putting my life on the line right now?” he said.

The woman was still on stage. She engaged in an animated argument with West, though once again, it was inaudible.

“Amber Rose. People told me to not date this woman because she was a stripper,” he said after turning back to the crowd.

“And there was a large comparison to Mary Magdalene. We went to the Vatican with Amber, and there was a painting by Raphael. And the Christian community might not like this, but there was a smudge next to Jesus’s head at the last supper. And the person who showed the painting said, ‘That was Mary.’

“And Amber Rose saw that and started crying. When she saw that - that the church tried to erase those who weren’t good enough, as they saw it. Amber started crying when she saw that. That’s what I mean by that. Jesus loved all people.

“In the state that we live in right now, we eat meat. In the Garden of Eden we didn’t have to. In this state right now, if someone is raped, I understand why someone would make the choice of getting an abortion.

“I understand, if a father is not there, I understand if a person is in an impoverished community, why - or if they’re impoverished and they can’t afford their fifth, or their sixth, or their seventh child, or even their first child, I understand the situation.

“God will still make a way. God will make a way.

“Society is set up in a way, we feel that God won’t make a way. When I was $53 million in debt, I was in the crazy home, and as soon as I said Jesus’s name out loud, he gave me the increase.

“What I’m saying is, we understand, we’re not going to go back to women having to go in an alley and do crazy things.”

The next part of West’s speech was drowned out by chatter from the increasingly restless crowd. He eventually told it to “quiet down” again, then went on a rant about the pro-choice slogan “My body, my choice”.

“Let’s say, when the baby is conceived, at that point it has a soul. That’s a real, living thing,” West said.

“Women love ‘My body, my choice’.

He launched into a hypothetical scenario in which a couple were separated, and had a child together, who was living with the mother.

“She says, ‘My house, my choice. I’m gonna kill my child.’” he said.

That comment prompted gasps and groans from some in the audience.

When West finished speaking about abortion and the woman returned to the crowd, he made a point of praising her for having the courage to stand up and make her argument.

“The fact that she was willing to stand up in front of all of you guys and say that she had an abortion, to make the point of how important it was for her to have that option as a woman, because she did not have the resources to have a baby. This woman is so brave,” West said, before asking the audience to applaud her.

Before the video feed cut out, bringing West’s rally to an abrupt end, the discussion briefly turned to legalising marijuana. That prompted a confession from the rapper.

“I did smoke a little bit last night,” he said.