Kanye West launched his presidential bid with an unconventional rally that saw him crying on stage about abortion. 

The rapper, who recently converted to Christianity, sobbed uncontrollably at one point when discussing the hot button issue. 

He alleged that he had contemplated aborting his oldest child, daughter North, but his wife, reality TV star Kim Kardashian-West, was determined to go through with the pregnancy.  They had North in 2013 and have had three more children together.

At the rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, West claimed his own dad had wanted to abort him but his mum refused. 

"My mum saved my life," he shouted from the stage while clad in a bulletproof vest with "2020" shaved into the back of his head.

"My dad wanted to abort me. My mum saved my life. There wouldn't have been no Kanye West, because my dad was too busy," he said. 

After finding out Kim was pregnant with North, Kanye said he didn't want to keep the baby because he was living "the rapper's lifestyle", but he changed his mind when he got a message from God. 

"And I called my wife and she said, we're gonna have this baby. I said we're gonna have this child ... So even if my wife were to divorce me after this speech, she brought North into the world when I didn't want to. She stood up and she protected that child," he said.

He then said he supported a "plan A" or "A1" as a replacement for the "Plan B" morning-after pill that would offer expectant mothers $50,000 to help take care of their child.  Later in the rally, he gave the figure of $1m. 

He clarified that he was not campaigning for abortion to be made illegal but for "maximum" financial support to be made available to pregnant women. 

"My stance is not to make abortion illegal at all. It should always be legal. But there should be an option of maximum increase available," he said. 

"Maximum increase would be, everybody that has a baby gets a million dollars."

He also said: "It takes a village to raise a child. Society has been set up for single mums to not have a village, to not have a child."

West often spoke about his Christian faith during his speech, telling the crowd that everyone was "equal in God's eyes".

"Sometimes people are controlled by demons, sometimes people are controlled by the environment that we are in but we are all God's people, there [are] no bad people. There are lost people, but we are all God's people," he said.