Debbie Stabenow slams Pete Hoekstra for support of 'personhood' bills

Taking their cue from a Rachel Maddow segment on MSNBC last night, Sen. Debbie Stabenow's campaign today is vigorously agreeing with the liberal TV commentator that Pete Hoekstra is one of seven Republican Senate candidates with extremist views on abortion.

In particular, the seven candidates make no exceptions for rape or incest in their opposition to legalized abortion. One of the seven is the controversial Richard Mourdock of Indiana who said in a candidate debate this week that when a woman becomes pregnant due to rape "it is something that God intended" and the embryo must be preserved.

Former congressman Hoekstra, the Stabenow campaign claims, has embraced out-of-the-mainstream positions on abortion, including support for an anti-Obamacare bill that would allow employers and insurance companies to offer health care policies that don’t cover mammograms, maternity care and birth control.

But it’s the Holland Republican’s sponsorship of so-called “personhood” bills on seven occasions that may give pause to some female GOP voters.
Personhood legislation establishes in law that life begins at conception, a standard that would not only outlaw all abortions it would ban the morning-after pill and it might have an impact on the use of IUDs and the practice of in-vitro fertilization.
Support for personhood has been labeled a radical position by critics since last November, when voters in the Bible Belt state of Mississippi rejected a personhood ballot proposal.