Huckabee Compares Abortion To Slavery During Fundraiser For Antiabortion Group

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Women's Health / Gynecology
Article Date: 25 Mar 2009 - 7:00 PDT

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Former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on Monday during a fundraiser for the antiabortion group Vitae Caring Foundation likened abortion to slavery, the AP/Kansas City Star reports. According to Huckabee, who made the comments during the fundraiser keynote address, when the U.S. abolished slavery, the country decided that it was immoral for one person to have complete control over another -- an idea that should extend to pregnant women and fetuses.

"What are we saying to the generation coming after us when we tell them that it is perfectly OK for one person to own another human being?" he asked, adding, "I thought we dealt with that 150 years ago when the issue of slavery was finally settled in this country, and we decided that it no longer was a political issue, it wasn't an issue of geography, it was an issue of morality. That is was either right or it was immoral that one person could own another human being and have full control even to the point of life and death over that other human being."

Huckabee also said that his goal is to see the enactment of a federal constitutional amendment that "protects every human life from the point of conception until its natural conclusion." Mary Ratliff, Missouri NAACP president, said that comparing abortion to slavery for political purposes is offensive. "It seems to me now that when folks want to object to some kind of morality type of issue, they want to attach it to slavery," she said (Blank, AP/Kansas City Star, 3/23).

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