Rick Santorum & Al Sharpton Face Off On Abortion, Civil Rights (VIDEO)

Former GOP Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a pro-life champion, locked horns with civil rights leader Al Sharpton over the issue of abortion in a heated debate Monday night.

The primary matter at hand was a racially-charged volley lobbed by Santorum at Obama over the president's belief that women should be given a right to choose. "I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say 'now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people,'" Santorum said of the Obama's belief in abortion rights an interview last week.

Santorum, as he has proven in the past week, appeared happy to again dig in his heels and stand by this contention during the argument Monday.

"They were denied rights under the Constitution," Santorum said, speaking of blacks before the passage of the 14th Amendment, before connecting that to his argument that abortion rights are inherently an infringement on the civil rights of fetuses.

"Rev. Sharpton, there is no debate. That entity at the moment of conception is alive and it is genetically human. You were that entity at some point, [Hannity] was that entity, everybody was that entity. It is a human life," Santorum continued. "The person who's most robbed of their civil right is that child in the womb."

"That is an exact distortion of what you said," Sharpton responded, "we're not debating whether or not at any stage blacks were human, we were debating that all blacks...at any stage at any age were less than human...it was two different things."

WATCH (via Mediaite):

Comments

[Liberty1967]

02:17 AM on 02/14/2011

"Rick Santorum, a pro-life champion.." Is our writer revealiing his biases? A "pro-life champion"?! Wow. Anti-abortion rights politician, I think is more like it. Nick Gates, where are you coming from.

[johmich5]

01:04 AM on 02/09/2011

The legal comparison between abortion and slavery is indisputable. Proponents of slavery suppressed the rights of salves by claiming that they were 3/5ths human and that they were therefore, not persons but property to be owned, sold or destroyed at will. Roe v Wade found that all unborn children are merely “Potentiality for Human Life”, not persons, merely property to be destroyed at will. Non-personhood applies to all pre-natal children, regardless of viability. This is exactly the same dehumanizing argument used to legalize slavery. Sen. Rick Santorum is right on this one. Conservative Christian Republicans are fighting to uphold all human rights and liberties, including unborn persons and were they were champions of abolition. I understand a pregnant woman’s plight, but her right to abort must be weighed against the right of the unborn Person to live. Science now proves that human life begins at conception. The only question remaining is when will we choose to legally call that unborn human life, a person and grant it Civil liberties?

[Marilyn Hemingway]

12:20 AM on 02/14/2011

I see you buy in to the school of "if I say it enough it must be true" when stating "Science now proves that human life begins at conception­." please cite a source otherwise this is pure hogwash. By the way, it is the woman's right to have a choice regarding her body. Not the goverment's, not yours and not mine. Former Senator Rick Santorum is wrong...he is arrogantly wrong. How dare he presumes to speak for an entire race. He first needs to walk a mile in my shoes as an African American and a woman.

[ken607]

08:09 AM on 01/29/2011

funny all life is sacred until their born!

[kengault]

03:36 PM on 01/28/2011

I would love to smoke a cigar over at the Grand Havana Room with Al.

[RockyMissouri]

12:11 PM on 02/07/2011

Who would have thought that Al would come to have the voice of reason, sanity and eloquence.... No woman or girl who undergoes the trauma of an abortion is joyful..

[Nelle]

01:44 PM on 01/28/2011

I saw the part of the interview where Rick Santorum announces that the African-American population would be twice what it is today if it weren't for the high abortion rates. I wish I could ask Mr. Santorum the following question: What would the QUALITY of life be like for those children. The GOP is already trying to take away the things that working-class people in the black community need today such as: health insurance, education, Medicaid/Medicare, unemployment insurance, low to moderate income housing grants, union rights, etc. Given this, why should anyone imagine that the quality of life for this larger population of African-Americans would be significantly better in any way?

It's strange how the GOP cares so much for the unborn African-Americans but refuse to invest in things that would help the black community in the U.S. have a better QUALITY of life. The only things they will invest in (without screaming about the deficit) are more wars and prisons. As a member of the African-American community myself, I find it very interesting.

[johmich5]

01:06 AM on 02/09/2011

Sounds like eugentics to me.

[Nelle]

11:47 AM on 01/28/2011

I saw the part of the interview where Rick Santorum announces that the African-American population would be twice what it is today if it weren't for the high abortion rates. I wish I could ask Mr. Santorum the following question: What would the QUALITY of life be like for those children. The GOP is already trying to take away the things that working-class people in the black community need today such as: health insurance, education, Medicaid/Medicare, unemployment insurance, low to moderate income housing grants, union rights, etc. Given this, why should anyone imagine that the quality of life for this larger population of African-Americans would be significantly better in any way?

It's strange how the GOP cares so much for the unborn African-Americans but refuse to invest in things that would help the black community in the U.S. have a better QUALITY of life. The only things they will invest in (without screaming about the deficit) are more wars and prisons. As a member of the African-American community myself, I find it very interesting that the GOP wants a larger, poorer black community in the U.S. now.

[SanityBuff]

01:36 AM on 01/27/2011

Even after conception it's still about a week before the egg makes it to the uterus and pregnancy begin. A lot of eggs get flushed out of the woman's body during her cycle.

George Carlin has a hilarious joke about this: "so basically what these anti-abortion people are telling us is that any woman who has had more than one period is a serial killer."

[kengault]

07:45 PM on 01/28/2011

Yeah I guess but didn't he mean the unfertilized ones? Who knows? Just get the abortion if 'ya want right?

[Fortune27]

02:38 PM on 01/26/2011

Santorum...Sanitorium. Santorum...Sanitorium. Santorum...Sanitorium.

[NKnow]

12:25 PM on 01/26/2011

If fetuses are people how come they're not counted on the sensus?
Why can't you claim them as dependants.

As a man I don't have any skin in the abortion game. I'll never have to worry about carrying a kid to term.

As a black man I don't feel any responsibility to fight for the rights of the un-born either. I spend my time worrying about the rights of the BORN. Not sure why Ricky should feel that blacks should somehow be on the pro-life wagon because of our race. For myself I wonder where the pro-lifers were when the bombs started falling in Iraq and Afghanistan. War is a definite threat to human life, but the right wing wasn't all up in arms about the rights of Non American citizens to not have cluster bombs and FAE weapons dropped on their kids.

[athenalong]

02:10 AM on 01/28/2011

Fanned & Faved.

PREACH, bruh.

[johmich5]

01:08 AM on 02/09/2011

You are an genius! Problem solved, not!

[Amalek]

10:36 AM on 01/26/2011

Only thing I like about Santorum is how well his name fits him.

[vegancheesenut]

10:50 AM on 01/26/2011

LOL.....thought the same but didn't want to say it.......ha F&F

[comment from Ron]

10:12 AM on 01/26/2011

One interesting thing about this debate is that the same people who do not want the government involved in their personal lives, are the same people who want the government to intervene and make abortions illegal. Another point is that, honestly, I have never heard a person who believes in pro choice say they are pro abortion. Having an abortion is, and should be, a difficult choice, but the choice should be available. The Republicans try to paint this picture of two camps: anti abortion and pro abortion. In this way, they get to frame the debate. We need to constantly refer to this as either anti choice or pro choice, in order to frame the debate correctly. Last of all, and I know this creates furor among many males, but as a guy I just don't think any final decisions on whether an abortion should be performed should be up to me. If personally involved, I would like to be part of the discussion, but this is about a women's right to choose.

As an aside, Rik Santorum should not even be allowed to be part of the debate. He is an irrational extremist who should never have a seat at the table.

[gleannfia]

10:54 AM on 01/30/2011

As a woman, I say thank you for being so enlightened. I only wish there were more of you. The US seems to have become the land of the Angry White Male.

[Gronkie]

10:04 AM on 01/26/2011

Mental midget wrestling match

[EmmaNYC]

09:38 AM on 01/26/2011

Ugh, two absolutely distasteful people having a debate about a subject they can't possibly understand. When will men get out of the business of pontificating about women's wombs?

[Playfaire]

04:21 AM on 01/27/2011

F'd and f'd!

[boycottrightwingthings]

04:21 PM on 02/08/2011

Emma, good points...but when will women make fighting for choice and access to reproductive health a priority in ther lives?? It seems those who make it a priority to fight against women and their reproductive health rights are not met by the same resistance on our side, and the anti choicers are the minority (albiet a very vocal and busy one.) How do we win?? We need answers, solutions, and much more vocal activism!!

[walleymr]

09:16 AM on 01/26/2011

So, Santorum is pro-choice?

[Artemis34]

03:04 AM on 01/26/2011

For Catholic hierarchy:

Inside the womb: sacred
Outside the womb: prey

[comment from Ron]

09:55 AM on 01/26/2011

That was good. Sometimes I need a good chuckle.