Doug Mastriano, a Pennsylvania state senator who is the GOP nominee for governor, once said that women who violated his proposed abortion ban should be charged with murder.
Mastriano — who was endorsed by former president Donald Trump in May — has appealed to hard-right voters, including by supporting strict abortion restrictions, calling the separation of church and state a “myth” and promoting the false claim that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
Mastriano has walked a fine line on abortion since he won the gubernatorial primary and the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, making the issue one of the most relevant ahead of the November election. While he has attempted to paint his Democratic opponent, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, as “extreme” on the issue, he has also downplayed his past stances on abortion, saying the issue is up to the state’s voters.
In a 2019 interview with Pennsylvania radio station WITF, which was first resurfaced Tuesday by NBC News, Mastriano spoke about a bill he sponsored in the state legislature that would have outlawed abortion as soon as cardiac activity is detected, around six weeks of pregnancy.
Pennsylvania Senate Bill 912 — which was never passed — would have significantly altered existing legislation in the state, which allows abortions up to 24 weeks and beyond in cases in which the mother’s life and health would be demonstrably endangered otherwise.
The interviewer asked Mastriano to clarify whether he was arguing that a woman who underwent an abortion at 10 weeks gestation should be charged with murder. “Yes, I am,” Mastriano replied, insisting that the fetus deserves “equal protection under the law.”
He also suggested in the interview that physicians who perform abortions after cardiac activity is detected should face the same charge. “It goes back down to the courts,” he said. “If it’s ruled that that little person is a baby, a human being, then that’s murder, and it has to go through the legal procedures.” The Washington Post could not immediately reach Mastriano for comment early Wednesday.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe in June, the issue of abortion has upended the midterms, appearing to energize the Democratic base and throwing into question what was previously expected to be a sweeping GOP victory. More than a dozen U.S. states have since entirely or largely outlawed abortions.
Pennsylvania is a purple state, with a Democratic governor and a Republican-controlled legislature.
Mastriano is a controversial figure in the state. He has been accused of Islamophobic comments, been photographed wearing a Confederate uniform, and was on the U.S. Capitol grounds the day of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection by a pro-Trump mob.
He has consistently opposed abortion — and gone further than some other Republicans in advocating against the procedure even in extreme cases such as rape. His 2019 bill was referred to the state Senate’s health and human services committee but did not become law. However, in 2021, the senator reintroduced the bill, now as Senate Bill 378.
While on his campaign website Mastriano pledges to sign a bill on fetal cardiac activity into law, “end funding to Planned Parenthood, and expand counseling for adoption services” if elected, he has also attempted to put the focus on voters and legislators.
“If Pennsylvanians want exceptions, if they want to limit the number of weeks, it’s going to have to come from your legislative body and then to my desk,” he recently told a conservative network.
Shapiro, Mastriano’s opponent, has pitched himself as the last line of defense for Pennsylvanians’ abortion rights. In September of last year, he joined a coalition of 24 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in support of the Department of Justice’s challenge to a proposed six-week abortion ban in Texas.
In May, Shapiro told the New York Times: “The legislature is going to put a bill on the desk of the next governor to ban abortion. Every one of my opponents would sign it into law, and I would veto it.”
Amber Philipps, Hannah Knowles and Caroline Kitchener contributed to this report.