Politician to quit following reports of affair

UNITED STATES: Republican congressman Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania announced yesterday he would not run for a ninth term, amid tawdry revelations of an extramarital affair in which the anti-abortion lawmaker urged his mistress to get an abortion when he thought she was pregnant.

Murphy said in a brief statement that he will ‘‘take personal time to seek help as my family and I continue to work through our personal difficulties’'.

Murphy’s decision came a day after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published text messages between Murphy and Shannon Edwards. A January 25 text message from Edwards told the congressman he had ‘‘zero issue posting your prolife stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options’'.

A text message from Murphy’s number in response said his staff was responsible for his anti-abortion messages.

Edwards, it turned out, wasn’t pregnant. Murphy recently acknowledged his affair with Edwards, which became pub- lic as a result of her divorce proceedings.

The revelation came as the House on Wednesday approved Republican legislation that would make it a crime to perform an abortion after 20 weeks of foetal development. Murphy, a member of the House pro-life caucus, is among the bill’s co-sponsors.

The Post-Gazette also published a sixpage memo apparently written by Murphy’s congressional chief of staff in which she accused Murphy of subjecting his staff to ‘‘threats, hostility, anger and harassment’'. - AP