NAACP leader blasts Huckabee for comparing abortion to slavery Ron Brynaert

Published: Tuesday March 24, 2009





Print This Email This A NAACP leader is blasting former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee for comparing abortion to slavery.



Huckabee's comments were made "Monday speech during a fundraiser for an anti-abortion group," the Associated Press reports.



"The half-hour speech was the keynote address during a luncheon fundraiser for the Jefferson City-based Vitae Caring Foundation," the AP notes. "The organization, created in 1991, sponsors advertisements across the country encouraging women to seek alternatives to abortion."



The AP adds, "Huckabee said that when it abolished slavery, the U.S. debated and decided it was immoral for one person to have complete, life-or-death power over another. He said that should not change whether the control involves racial bigotry or a pregnant woman making a decision for her unborn child."



"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?" Huckabee said. "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 it 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."



According to Missourinet.com, Huckabee added, "The idea that one person, in this case a biological mother, would have life and death control over another human being - albeit her own child - but could have that level of ownership over another is no longer just an issue of politics or culture, but the utmost essence of moral behavior of a civilized people."



Missouri NAACP President Mary Ratliff told the The Associated Press that the comparison was "'apples to oranges' and called it offensive to use the issue of slavery for an unrelated political point."



"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," Ratliff told the AP.



This isn't the first time Huckabee has made the comparison. Two years ago, in his failed quest for the Republican presidential nomination, Huckabee explained to Fox News, why the "law of the land" didn't lead him to leave abortion as a state issue as then-rivals Senator John McCain and Fred Thompson had stated on the campaign trail.



"Well, its the logic of the Civil War," Huckabee said in 2007. "If morality is the point here, and if its right or wrong, not just a political question, then you cant have 50 different versions of whats right and whats wrong. Again, thats what the whole Civil War was about. Can you have states saying slavery is OK, other states saying its not? If abortion is a moral issue--and for many of us it is, and I know for others its not. So if you decide that its just a political issue, then thats a perfectly acceptable, logical conclusion. But for those of us for whom this is a moral question, you cant simply have 50 different versions of whats right."



Audio of Huckabee's speech can be heard at this link.





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