Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson said he would “love” to see Roe vs. Wade overturned, and he compared women who terminate their pregnancies to “slave owners.”
“During slavery — and I know that’s one of those words you’re not supposed to say, but I’m saying it,” Carson said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “A lot of the slave owners thought that they had the right to do whatever they wanted to that slave, anything that they chose to do. And what if the abolitionists had said: ‘You know, I don’t believe in slavery. I think it’s wrong, but you guys do whatever you want to do’? Where would we be?”
While the Republican candidate said he opposes abortion for unwanted pregnancies and in cases of rape and incest, the retired neurosurgeon told moderator Chuck Todd that he might be open to allowing the procedures to preserve the life and health of the mother.
“That’s an extraordinarily rare situation,” Carson said. “But if in that very rare situation it occurred, I believe there’s room to discuss that.”
The soft-spoken candidate also explained that his past controversial comments have become flash points because they resonate with “people who aren’t really thinking deeply.”
Carson was asked how he would respond if he became the GOP nominee and those contentious remarks are used to attack him. His response: “As people get to know me, they know that I’m not a hateful, pathological person like some people try to make me out to be. And that will be self-evident. So I don’t really worry about that.”
Watch the video of Carson on “Meet the Press” below.