Sharron Angle, the GOP nominee for Senate in Nevada, is maintaining her reputation for uncompromising conservative policies. In a radio interview from late June uncovered by the Huffington Post, Angle addresses the issue of abortion in the case of rape and incest. Angle told conservative radio host Alan Stock that she would counsel a (hypothetical) 13-year-old girl, raped and impregnated by her father, that "two wrongs don't make a right," and that it is possible to make "a lemon situation into lemonade."
It is the latest in a series of very right-wing positions Angle has revealed. She has also said she wants to abolish the Department of Education, the Energy Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, and hugh swaths of the Internal Revenue Service. She wants to take the U.S. out of the U.N. because the latter has "has been captured by the far left," phase out Social Security, and perhaps ban alcohol. She has backed a Scientology-based drug-rehab program and called for armed revolution against the very political body she seeks to join.
Her strategy, since winning the Republican primary and beginning a campaign against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, has been to avoid the press except conservative outlets—an attempt, it seems, to avoid questioning of her more outside-the-mainstream ideas. That seems, in this case, to have backfired.
Here's the full transcript of the exchange between Angle and Stock.
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 its 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 Fathers 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.
