Former Senator Rick Santorum thinks black people should be anti-choice

It looks like the former Senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum, is working on getting another alternative definition to his last name. In an interview on Right Wing Watch, Santorum discusses the anti-choice movement's desire to add the "personhood" of zygotes and fetuses to the United States Constitution. Barack Obama's platform on abortion issues has been pro-choice throughout his presidency. He naturally answered "no" when asked whether a zygote ought to be considered a human being, afforded the same rights and privileges as actual human beings, from the moment of conception. Rick says:

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.

Santorum insultingly draws a parallel between Obama's blackness and the plight of zygotes. I will tell you, Rick Santorum, the reason that these two examples are not equatable — and this is only the most glaring and obvious reason — is that black people can definitely survive outside of their mother's uteri. And to address the slavery connection you so tastelessly implied, I think that if you enslaved a black person, or any adult person of any race, alongside a zygote, the actual human being would be substantially worse off, since they would have the capacity to experience and understand their enslavement.

Many individuals oppose abortion for everyone, and I respectfully disagree with them, but I think the anti-choice argument ought to rely on the idea that a zygote is a potential human being, not on incendiary racial rhetoric.