Rick Santorum and Al Sharpton squared off on Hannity last night over Santorum’s remark about President Obama and abortion: “I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, ‘we’re going to decide who are people and who are not people.’”
Though Santorum stood by his comments, Sharpton repeatedly argued that the comparison was “not an appropriate” one because there was “no reason at all to bring race into an argument that is a constitutional argument, and that is an argument about where life starts. Blacks were not considered three-fifths of a human being because there was a debate about their humanity. Because if they were 80 years old or a fetus they were considered less than human.”
Sample exchange:
Sharpton: “You tried to use how blacks were dehumanized at any age, and equate that with the argument that is before the American public and the courts, and that does not fit.”Santorum: “You just said the difference between the debate over slavery and the debate over abortion is the question of whether we’re talking about a human life or not.”
Sharpton: “No, I said there is a debate over where human life starts. There was no debate over where blacks’ life started.”
Watch:
Jillian Rayfield
Jillian Rayfield is a Reporter/Blogger for TPM, and started as a News Intern in May 2009. She graduated from Cornell University in May 2008 with a degree in Film, and worked as a Research Assistant for a market research firm in London in between.
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