Man with 27 wives and 145 children doesn't want polygamy to be legalised

Polygamy is a practice that is banned in most countries across the world, and is also one that is clearly seen as threat to women’s rights

With 27 wives and 145 children at the age of 59, Winston Blackmore has to be the poster-boy for polygamy, but instead he says that he won’t support legalisation of the practice, since he fears that ‘women could be exploited’.

The leader of a polygamist Mormon fundamentalist group in Canada said this while addressing an audience in Utah. He has also been arrested for polygamy in 2007, and has been tried twice for practising polygamy.

Referring to charges being dropped against him in 2007 due to concerns over selection of the special prosecutor, Blackmore was reported by The Salt Lake Tribune as saying, "And those suckers are after me day and night, I'm going to have to go another round with them."

He also mentioned that Canada changed common law marriages to prosecute him and said that he was being charged even though his wives were officially his friends. He also said that he never courted any of his wives, and said that many women including one of his wives Edith Barlow, approaching him about becoming his wife, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

Blackmore was convicted in 2001 and 2002 for bigamy and child rape for fathering a child with his 13-year-old step daughter. A polygamy charge was filed against Blackmore in 2014, but a trial date has not been decided yet.