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Extremism conceals real threat of anti-abortion movement

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Sarah Cheverton
WVoN co-editor

North Carolina Republican Larry Pittman joined Rick Santorum this week in the race to decide who is the most extreme anti-abortion campaigner in the GOP.

Following on from Santorum’s ‘make lemonade’ comments calling for women who are impregnated as a result of rape to ‘make the best of a bad situation’, Pittman revealed a different strategy for reducing abortion – hang the abortionists.

Pittman made the comments in an email leaked by WRAL and sent in error to the entire North Carolina General Assembly after he hit ‘Reply all’ instead of ‘Reply’.

He wrote: “We need to make the death penalty a real deterrent again by actually carrying it out. Every appeal that can be made should have to be made at one time, not in a serial manner.

“If murderers (and I would include abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers, as well) are actually executed, it will at least have the deterrent effect upon them. For my money, we should go back to public hangings, which would be more of a deterrent to others, as well.”

His remarks were made in response to a recent letter from Death Row inmate Danny Robbie Hembree Jnr on the ‘easy life’ of prison.

Following the leak, Pittman tried to distance himself from the comments.

“I got a bit carried away and overstated my case. I am sure I am not the only one who has ever done that.”

Santorum and Pittman’s extreme positions conceal the growing seriousness of the anti-abortion lobby in the US.

In 2007, the US Supreme Court upheld the first federal law banning abortion procedures, opening the floodgates for the GOP and others to apply increasing pressure on laws safe-guarding abortion rights.

Since then, commentators have expressed growing concerns over a series of proposed legislative measures to restrict women’s reproductive rights. Some have gone as far as to describe the Republican primary as the ‘anti-abortion primary’.

With a right wing coalition in power in the UK, feminists this side of the water are keeping a close eye on the US anti-abortion lobby.

This week, Labour MP Diane Abbott walked out of the all-party parliamentary group on abortion counselling, saying that talks were merely window-dressing for the agenda of ‘Tea Party Tories’, and accusing the government of “trying to turn the clocks back.”

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