At a campaign stop in Iowa last week, Mike Huckabee elaborated on his pledge to outlaw all abortion by declaring legal “personhood” for fertilized eggs and fetuses, telling the audience at a town hall event that if he is elected president, he will simply start operating as if zygotes have full constitutional rights. If anyone were to have a problem with that, he said, they could challenge him in the courts. (Whether or not he would actually abide by a court ruling is still an open question.)

“As president, I would say, ‘We will protect every person,’” Huckabee said in Waukee, Iowa. “And I know that would just send shockwaves. There would be lawsuits immediately. Fine. Let there be. Let’s let this now work its way, but from the position, instead of being where we defend the killing of 60 million babies since 1973…let us now operate on the principle that it is not okay and let them fight for the right to take those baby’s lives, let them tell us when that person becomes a person, let us argue their point of the unrestricted right to deny life and liberty to that person.”

The former Arkansas governor added that he would feel compelled to make such a move — which would criminalize abortion in all cases and could threaten common forms of birth control — because otherwise he couldn’t continue to ask God to bless America.

“We’ve never had a president who was willing to go there,” he said. “Well, I’m not just willing. If I’m elected, I will go there. And the reason why is because I don’t believe I can honestly make a speech and end it by saying ‘God bless you and God bless America’ if we are committing such savagery as the infanticide that we have continued to slaughter so many unborn children.”

Huckabee went on to reiterate his hope to see Planned Parenthood “criminally prosecuted” and “go out of business” because “we simply are protecting the people that they used to take money to end their lives.”

The Iowa conservative blog Caffeinated Thoughts posted the comments on its YouTube page: