Perhaps he's hoping to get bonus points for novelty: Rick Santorum says that President Obama shouldn't support abortion rights because he's black. The former Pennsylvania senator--and potential presidential candidate--told a conservative talk show host that a fetus is a person. And therefore, "I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, 'No, we're going to decide who are people and who are not people.'"
This appears to be a reference to slavery and the "Three-Fifths Compromise," as National Journal's Tim Alberta notes, which allowed southern states to count 60 percent of their slaves when apportioning members of Congress--meaning every slave was considered three-fifths of a person.Santorum was objecting to Obama's explanation, made during the 2008 campaign, that deciding when human life begins is "above my pay grade." Santorum said that was a cop-out: "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."
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Elspeth Reeve
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