With views like this, Rick Santorum might want to think twice about running for president:
Potential 2012 presidential candidate and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) doesn't understand how President Obama could not answer whether a "human life" is protected by the Constitution from the moment of conception: "The question is -- and this is what Barack Obama didn't want to answer -- is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no. Well if that person -- human life is not a person, then -- I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, 'we're going to decide who are people and who are not people.'"
This is mostly forgotten, but during the second 2004 presidential debate, President Bush said that his nominees for the Supreme Court would not condone the Dred Scott decision, which blocked blacks from citizenship, and held that slaves were the property of their owners, even when taken to free states and territories.
On its face, this was a strange thing to say. But Bush wasn't affirming his opposition to slavery, he was sending a dog whistle to the Christian right, which has long analogized Roe to Dred Scott. The argument, basically, is that both rulings attack human personhood. In the case of Dred Scott, the Court ruled against black personhood, and in the case of Roe v. Wade, the Court ruled against fetal personhood. Q.E.D (as they would say).
Santorum is simply restating this in a slightly more awkward form: "How could a black man oppose fetal personhood when his forebears were slaves and property?" Santorum isn't really hurting for support from the anti-abortion crowd, but if he is, this should help seal the deal.
Of course, it should go without saying that this is unadulterated bullshit. It's one thing to oppose abortion -- reasonable people can disagree -- it is something else entirely to compare the practice to chattel slavery, or worse, the Holocaust. Even if you grant fetal personhood, there is nothing in the "experience" of a fetus that compares to the extreme violence and depravity of slavery, and its effect on people -- children, teenagers, and adults -- with hopes, dreams, and desires.
On some level, anti-abortion activists know this; otherwise, they'd be in armed revolt. That they aren't is revealing; far from an accurate take on the situation, the abortion/slavery analogy is a fantasy for self-righteous ideologues, who want to believe that theirs is a great moral crusade, when in truth, it's nothing of the sort.
-- Jamelle Bouie
