Huckabee Compares Differing State Laws On Abortion Rights To Differing Slavery Laws

Main Category: Abortion
Article Date: 21 Jan 2008 - 12:00 PDT

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Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, on Thursday said that allowing states to decide whether to ban abortion is not enough and that the U.S. Constitution needs to be amended to ban the procedure, AFP/Yahoo! News reports.

In an interview with Beliefnet online magazine, Huckabee said, "That's again the logic of the Civil War -- that slavery could be OK in Georgia but not OK in Massachusetts. Obviously, we'd today say, 'Well that's nonsense. Slavery is wrong, period. It can't be right somewhere and wrong somewhere else.' Same with abortion." Huckabee also said he supports a constitutional amendment to say that life begins at conception (AFP/Yahoo! News, 1/18).

In related news, former Sen. Fred Thompson (Tenn.), who also is running for the Republican nomination, was asked on Thursday about automated calls placed by the group Common Sense Issues that tell Thompson supporters in South Carolina that the senator supported an abortion procedure. According to the AP/Google.com, Common Sense Issues is making more than one million phone calls in South Carolina supporting Huckabee.

"One of the things they say is that I supported partial-birth abortion?" Thompson asked, adding, "They're making the most outrageous, most easily disproved claims they could come up with." Thompson called on Huckabee "to put a stop to this." Huckabee said he has "denounced" the group making the calls "in every way I know how," adding, "I can't contact them; there's nothing I can do but denounce them" (Davenport, AP/Google.com, 1/17).

Transcript and audio of Huckabee's Beliefnet interview are available online.

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