Radio host Rush Limbaugh says Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s blackface yearbook scandal is elbowing out his earlier part in exposing an American “pro-death movement.”

The conservative radio host told listeners on Monday that they shouldn’t let racist images from Mr. Northam’s 1984 medical school yearbook — or the political circus now surrounding the Democrat — completely crowd out a broader issue regarding abortion in America.

“Ralph Northam has made clear for everybody what the pro-choice movement really is: it’s a pro-death movement,” Mr. Limbaugh said Monday, a reference to the governor’s defense of the state’s proposed Repeal Act.

SEE ALSO: Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam defends bill allowing abortion during labor

The bill recently captured headlines because it would allow a woman to terminate her pregnancy while she’s in labor.

“The infant would be delivered,” Mr. Northam told a radio station last week. “The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

Big League Politics, which first broke the blackface yearbook story, said its source was prompted to action by the interview.

“I can say that the decision to publicize this photo by bringing it to me was based on this person’s anger about what Gov. Northam said about infanticide,” said Patrick Howley, the website’s editor in chief, Associated Press reported Monday. “[The tipster is] absolutely not a political operative, absolutely not — just a concerned citizen.”

“It’s not just Ralph Northam,” Mr. Limbaugh continued. “You know, New York state’s getting a pass, but they are identical to Ralph Northam! They beat Ralph Northam to the punch, in fact! New York state legalized everything Northam’s talking about, including abortion after a failed abortion, death after a birth. And they gave it a standing ovation in the New York State Senate. Now, nobody’s talking about that because the Northam story has dwarfed it.”

“It’s devious where it is headed, because of one thing: For any of this to be happening, there has to be an accompanying decline in the appreciation of the sanctity of life,” the conservative said. “What it means to me is that there is an accelerating decline in God if the lives of many people … if there’s no God in your life, then there’s no stopping aberrant, murderous-type behavior. If there’s no God, if there’s no judgmentalism, if there’s no built-in morality, if there’s no apparent price, then what obstacle is there to base, depraved behavior? This is where all of this has been already taking us since 1973, I believe.”

Mr. Northam now says that he did not appear in blackface or a Ku Klux Klan outfit, despite initially apologizing for the image.

He told reporters over the weekend that he did, however, apply blackface while imitating Michael Jackson during a 1984 dance contest.

“I used just a little bit of shoe polish to put on my cheeks and the reason I used a very little bit because — I don’t know if anyone’s ever tried that — you cannot get shoe polish off,” he said. “But it was a dance contest. I had always liked Michael Jackson. I actually won the contest because I had learned to do the ‘moonwalk.’”

The Democrat seemed to waver on showing off his “moonwalk” skills before his wife intervened with a warning regarding the “inappropriate circumstances.”