A Republican lawmaker fighting to hold onto his competitive Texas seat said Thursday he'd force a daughter to have her baby if she'd been impregnated by rape.
Texas House Rep. John Lujan made this claim on Texas Public Radio during a lengthy interview about key campaign issues in his race against Democratic candidate Kristian Carranza.
“If I had a daughter, and that would have been, you know, it would have been a rape," Lujan said. "I would say no, we're going to have the baby.”
Lujan represents south Bexar County Texas House District 118, once a reliable win for Democrats until he won a 2021 special election and the 2022 midterms by 52 percent, according to TPR.
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The former firefighter, 62, now faces a challenge from Carranza, a 33-year-old political organizer who has worked as a regional director for the Democratic National Committee and on both Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns.
On Friday, Carranza condemned Lujan's comment about the hypothetical daughter he said he would not allow to abort a rapist's fetus.
“Texas women are dying, fleeing the state and being forced to carry rape and incest related pregnancies because of extreme politicians like John Lujan," said Carranza.
"This glimpse into Lujan’s lack of awareness into this nightmare facing everyday Texans is exactly why we’re going to defeat him in November.”
Texas enacted a total abortion ban in 2022 and has since seen 26,000 pregnancies from rape and incest, according to the San Antonio Current.
The year before, the Texas Legislature banned abortion care as early as five weeks into pregnancy and saw a dramatic rise in deaths among pregnant women, according to NBC News.
Abortion has become a key issue in the 2024 presidential election as voters decide between Donald Trump, the former president whose Supreme Court justice appointees overturned Roe v. Wade, and Vice President Kamala Harris, who has vowed to pass legislation protecting abortion on the national level.
