Tina Freitas, a Republican running for Virginia’s state Senate this November, wants to ban abortion. In a recent radio interview on a conservative talk show, she likened her efforts to the abolitionist movement and made the disturbing claim that abortion providers were effectively covering up for rapists and domestic abusers.

In audio from the John Fredericks Show, first flagged by American Bridge 21st Century, Freitas was asked whether Alabama’s recently passed abortion ban — an unconstitutional measure which lacks even exceptions for rape and incest cases — went too far. She responded by praising the law, as well as other abortion bans, as proof that America’s “culture is changing.”

“We are starting to value life again,” she told host John Fredericks. “It starts with a few states. That’s how abolition started. The thing is that it wasn’t always popular to say you couldn’t own people. Right now it’s not popular to say, ‘You can’t kill your offspring.’ Well, I’m sorry, but right is right and wrong is wrong and, eventually, our culture will come around to recognize this as an abhorrent, barbaric act masquerading as some kind of cure for a pregnancy you don’t want.”

Freitas then claimed that the left did not value life or care about domestic abuse.

“[It] is glaringly obvious that the left does not value human life. And they are notoriously soft on rapists and predators,” she claimed, alleging that abortion providers “will sit there and cover up for an abuser.”

“A lot of times it’s the abuser that’s taking the girl in to get the abortion, to wipe away his evidence of abuse so that he can take her back and abuse her some more,” she claimed.

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Susan B. Sorenson, director of the Ortner Center on Violence & Abuse and professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said in an email that while “reproductive coercion — forcing women to have babies they don’t want and to have abortions they don’t want — is real,” all “[c]ompetent abortion service providers are attuned to this reality and work to make sure that a woman isn’t being coerced so that they can respond to what the woman, not her abuser, wants.”

“Eliminating abortion won’t eliminate abuse,” she added. “If the goal is to stop abuse, it would make sense to focus on abuse not abortion.”

While Freitas is advocating for unconstitutional restrictions on the right of women and gender minorities to have autonomy over their own bodies, her campaign website contains the contradictory viewpoint that “The Government should focus on protecting our freedoms, property rights and ensuring that people are free to pursue their goals. When government moves beyond its constitutional authority to act, it violates its contract with the people that formed it.”

While polls show Virginia voters overwhelmingly support abortion rights, members of state GOP have made it clear they hope to further erode them if at all possible. Earlier this month, state Del. Bob Thomas (R) said on the same program that if the GOP can hold control of the legislature and take back the governorship in the next election, they intend to bring a near-total abortion ban to the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Freitas is challenging longtime incumbent state Sen. Emmett Hanger in a June 11 Republican primary.

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UPDATE: Freitas responded after publication, appearing to confirm her earlier remarks but offering no further clarification.