Anita Perry, the wife of Texas governor Rick Perry, said on Saturday that she believed abortion “could be a woman’s right.”
Asked how she would respond to women who see abortion as a “women’s rights” issue, she told the Texas Tribune’s Evan Smith, “That’s really difficult for me, Evan, because I see it as a woman’s right. If they want to do that, that is their decision; they have to live with that decision.”
Smith responded, “Mrs. Perry, I want to be sure that you didn’t just inadvertently make news. Are you saying that you believe abortion is a woman’s right, to make that choice?”
When she was pressed further, Perry responded: “Yeah, that could be a woman’s right. Just like it’s a man’s right if he wants to have some kind of procedure. But I don’t agree with it, and that’s not my view.”
Perry said that laws on abortion should be decided by the states and rejected the idea that Texas’s law banning abortions after 20 weeks represented a “war on women.”
“I see that as really protecting women,” she said.
