Women Should Be Charged With Murder For Abortions, Mastriano Once Said

PENNSYLVANIA — Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano said in a 2019 interview that woman who get abortions should be charged with murder if his proposed legislation banning the procedure is passed into law.

It's the latest development in a campaign decried by opponents as extreme and dangerous, and the latest sign that the longtime state senator and Trump ally would indeed make abortion his number one issue as promised if elected.

"Is that a human being? Is that a little boy or girl? If it is, it deserves equal protection under the law," Mastriano told WITF in previously unpublished comments, first reported Tuesday by NBC News.

When asked if he was saying the mother should be charged with murder, he reportedly replied "Yes, I am."

Mastriano has campaigned on his anti-abortion stance and his Heartbeat Bill, proposed legislation that would ban abortion with no exceptions, even in cases of rape and incest.

"Mastriano’s comments are yet another example of Republicans’ extreme views on abortion," a spokesperson for the Democratic Party said in a statement Tuesday. "Republicans across the country have made clear that if they gain power they will not stop at just banning abortion, but want to criminalize doctors, and, now, some even want to throw women in jail."

Pennsylvania's current law allows for abortions up to 24 weeks into pregnancy. While an eager Republican legislature would leap on the chance to put restrictions in place, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf — and Shapiro— would veto any such legislation.

Mastriano's comments echo, albeit in somewhat starker terms given Mastriano's elected political position at the time of the comment, the opinion put forth by U.S. Senate candidate and celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz.

Oz said during a tele-town hall back in May that "life starts at conception."

"I've said that multiple times," Oz continued. "If life starts at conception, why do you care what age the heart starts beating at? It’s, you know, it’s still murder, if you were to terminate a child whether their heart’s beating or not."

Abortion rights were long considered settled law, and even as conservative states pushed fetal heartbeat laws restricting abortion access in recent years, many legal scholars doubted that a right afforded to generations of women was in serious jeopardy. That all changed earlier this year in a monumental reversal of Roe v. Wade, one of the Supreme Court's most widely known landmark decisions. The reversal effectively placed "abortion on the ballot" for the 2022 election Pennsylvania.