Sharron Angle's Advice For Rape Victims Considering Abortion: Turn Lemons Into Lemonade
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Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle has moderated a host of policy positions in her transition from a primary candidate to general election contender battling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. One thing she has not backed away from has been her insistence that abortion should be outlawed universally, even in cases of rape and incest.
In a radio interview Angle did in late June, the Tea Party favorite re-affirmed her pro-life sensibilities (rigid, as they are, even within Republican circles), when she insisted that a young girl raped by her father should know that "two wrongs don't make a right." Much good can come from a horrific situation like that, Angle added. Lemons can be made into lemonade.
Stock: Let me bring up one other topic that I rarely talk about here, because it's one of those topics that's a lose-lose, but we've got to talk about it because it was brought up in your TV interview and that has to do with the issue of abortion, and whether or not abortion should be available in the case of rape or incest. The question to you at the time by the interviewer was that do you want the government to go and tell a 13 year-old child who has been raped by her father that she has to have that baby. And of course you responded 'I didn't say that I always say that I value life.' Where do you stand on the issue of abortion, a consensual abortion, from a person who is raped or is pregnant as a result of incest?Angle: Well right now our law permits that. My own personal feelings and that is always what I express, my personal feeling is that we need to err on the side of life. There is a plan and a purpose, a value to every life no matter what it's location, age, gender or disability. So whenever we talk about government and government's role, government's role is to protect life and that's what our Founding Father said, that we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Stock: What do you say then to a young girl, I am going to place it as he said it, when a young girl is raped by her father, let's say, and she is pregnant. How do you explain this to her in terms of wanting her to go through the process of having the baby?
Angle: I think that two wrongs don't make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade. Well one girl in particular moved in with the adoptive parents of her child, and they both were adopted. Both of them grew up, one graduated from high school, the other had parents that loved her and she also graduated from high school. And I'll tell you the little girl who was born from that very poor situation came to me when she was 13 and said 'I know what you did thank you for saving my life.' So it is meaningful to me to err on the side of life.
The interview, which took place on the conservative Alan Stock Show, was captured and sent to the Huffington Post by a source in Nevada. It is noteworthy primarily to the extent that it shows how doctrinaire Angle's views on abortion really are. The Nevada Republican earlier discussed her beliefs on the topic during an interview with the Bill Manders in which she called pregnancy in cases of rape and incest, "God's plan."
Since then, she's embraced the absolutist label she's been handed on abortion policy, refusing to back down from her statement to Manders during subsequent interviews and, clearly, expanding on it during her sit down with Alan Stock.
UPDATE: Angle's campaign released an abortion-related statement of Thursday afternoon:
It's easy to use rare situations such as the tragedies of rape and incest to skew the debate about the value of human life.At a time when the Federal Government is already burning through our tax dollars, the Obama Administration and Harry Reid are using federal funds to pay for abortions via the abolition of the Mexico City Policy and the passage of Obamacare.
If abortion advocates really believed in choice as they claim, they would be just as eager to present women in these tragic situations with choices they can actually live with for years to come. That was the point I was making.
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First Posted: 07/08/10 12:10 PM ET Updated: 05/25/11 06:00 PM ET