Pro-life Republican politician Kevin Calvey says he would 'set himself on fire' over abortion rights 'if I were not a Christian'

Calvey made the comments in connection with pay rises for judges

The Oklahoma State Capitol (Daniel Mayer/Creative Commons )

A politician in Oklahoma, who is opposed to state laws enabling women to seek abortions, has said he would set himself on fire in protest over the cause were he not a Christian.

Kevin Calvey, a Republican in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, made the comments in response to a Senate bill which would give Supreme Court judges and other appellate court staff a 6 per cent pay rise.

Mr Calvey argued that rather than being offered a pay rise, justices should be punished for not stopping women in Oklahoma from getting abortions.

“If I were not a Christian, and didn’t have a prohibition against suicide, I’d walk across the street and douse myself in gasoline and set myself on fire!” Mr Calvey said during a heated debate at the state capitol, according to local news broadcaster NewsChannel 4.

“To protest the evil that is going on over there, killing, giving the death penalty, to the will of the people and the will of this body and protecting the least among us,” he argued.

He went on to tell the station that women were being targeted by “the predatory abortion industry”.

But the authors of the bill said his argument was irrelevant. Co-author, Republican Representative Earl Sears said he does “not connect this bill” with abortion in the way that Mr Calvey does.

In 2014, restrictions on abortions were imposed in Oklahoma, including giving women state-directed counselling to discourage them from abortions, and only allowing insurance companies to cover abortions when pregnancy threatened a woman'’s life.

The use of telemedicine for abortions was also scrapped, as well as public funding for all abortions unless the woman’s life was in danger, she was raped, of if the child was conceived from incest, according to the Guttmacher Institute.