Coat-Hanger Abortions Are Fine, Says Mississippi Lawmaker

By Annie-Rose Strasser, ThinkProgress

16 May 12

ississippi state Rep. Bubba Carpenter (R) said that it's OK for women to have coat hanger abortions because it's for a greater good.

A video obtained by Rachel Maddow's blog captures Carpenter saying he is proud of Mississippi's attempts to outlaw abortion outright, despite the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled abortions legal in the United States.

And what about women who will perform self-induced abortions because they cannot afford to go out of state to get the procedure? “Hey,” he says, “you have to have moral values”:

It's going to be challenged, of course, in the Supreme Court and all - but literally, we stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi, legally, without having to- Roe vs. Wade. So we've done that. I was proud of it. The governor signed it into law. And of course, there you have the other side. They're like, ‘Well, the poor pitiful women that can't afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger. That's what we've learned over and over and over.'

But hey, you have to have moral values. You have to start somewhere, and that’s what we've decided to do. This became law and the governor signed it, and I think for one time, we were first in the nation in the state of Mississippi

Watch it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsM4n8DeSi0

Mississippi recently passed a law meant that legislators claimed was meant to stop self-induced abortions, known as “coat hanger abortions,” which are generally extremely unsafe and dangerous to a woman's health. At the same time, this law will likely force the state's only abortion clinic to close.