Pete “Spare Tire” DeGraaf’s Operation Rescue Ties

Via Think Progress, Republican Kansas state representative Pete DeGraaf thinks that women should be prepared to be raped in the same way that he keeps a spare tire in his car.

During floor debate over a bill to require women to purchase supplemental coverage in the event that they may need an abortion, a pro-choice state representative, Republican Barbara Bollier, questioned whether women would in fact plan for a pregnancy resulting from, for example, rape. To which DeGraaf responded, "We do need to plan ahead, don't we, in life?" adding, "I have spare tire on my car."


His online biography at Shepherds Staff Ministries, where DeGraaf, an Air Force Academy graduate and an ordained pastor, is a "biblical" financial advisor, boasts, "During the Summer of Mercy he served as Executive Director for Hope for the Heartland." The Summer of Mercy was a six-week abortion clinic blockade, organized by the fringe anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, that took place in Wichita in 1991, and focused on the clinic run by Dr. George Tiller, who was assassinated in his church in 2009. (A Summer of Mercy event is planned for this summer outside the Maryland clinic of Dr. Leroy Carhart, another target of vicious anti-choice agitators.)

Writing about the Summer of Mercy in Marie Claire in 2007, Amanda Robb described the 1991 Wichita scene:

That August, in Wichita, KS, whole families crawled across parking lots, winding up as heaps of "babies" at clinic doors. Children laid down in front of doctors' cars to stop them from driving to work. Protestors closed down every clinic in town.

more . . . http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/sarahposner/4656/pete_“spare_tire”_degraaf’s_operation_rescue_ties/

What is this "spare tire" women are supposed to have to prepare for rape? A condom? A stun gun? Mace?

He is just dispicable.