For Mike Huckabee, Opposing Abortion Isn't Just About His Christian

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For Mike Huckabee, Opposing Abortion Isn't Just About His Christian Views
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by Steven ErteltLifeNews.com EditorDecember 30, 2007
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Mike Huckabee gave an interview on Sunday in which he said that his opposition to abortion isn't just because he is a Christian. He said he beliefs are based on the Constitution and the idea that human beings have an intrinsic value that government has no right to take away.
Huckabee shared his pro-life views on with Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet the Press," a popular Sunday talk show that frequently features political figures.
Asked to talk about his position against legalized abortion, Huckabee talked about why he's opposed to it.
"Well, that's not just because I'm a Christian, that's because I'm an American," he said. "Our founding fathers said that we're all created equal. I think every person has intrinsic worth and value."
Told that banning abortions would have him imposing his Christian faith on others, Huckabee responded.
"It's not a faith belief. It's deeper than that. It's a human belief," Huckabee explained. "It goes to the heart of who we are as a civilization."
He continued, "If I believe that your intrinsic worth is not changed by your ancestry, your last name, by your IQ, by your abilities or disabilities, if I value your life and respect it with dignity and worth because it is human, then that's what draws me to the inescapable conclusion that I should be for the sanctity of every and each human life."
Huckabee also indicated he believed that life begins at the point of conception and told Russert he doesn't think there's any scientific argument about that point.


As he frequently does with pro-life candidates, Russert tried to make Huckabee appear more extreme by asking him if he would put women in jail who had abortions if Roe v. Wade is ever overturned.
Huckabee responded with the view shared by most of the pro-life community.
"I think you don't punish the woman, first of all, because it's not about--I consider her a victim, not a, not a criminal," he said.
Instead, he said the focus should be placed on prosecuting abortion practitioners who violate the law.

"I think if a doctor knowingly took the life of an unborn child for money, and that's why he was doing it, yeah, I think you would, you would find some way to sanction that doctor," he said.
"There's something to me untoward about a person who has committed himself to healing people and to making people alive who would take money to take an innocent life and to make that life dead," the former Arkansas governor added.
He said physicians should be practicing medicine under the Hippocratic Oath, under which they pledge to heal and not harm patients.
"If you take the life and suction out the pieces of an unborn child for no reason than its inconvenience to the mother, I don't think you've lived up to your Hippocratic Oath of doing no harm," Huckabee concluded.