Sophistry from Huckabee

So Mike Huckabee thinks abortion is slavery. Let me tell you why that is a stupid analogy.

Let's start with the source of the major disagreement between pro-life and pro-choice folks - the moment that life begins. The pro-lifers believe that life begins at conception - that when the sperm fertilizes the egg, God inserts a soul into the zygote. After this amazing act, God then disappears and allows that zygote to develop into a person that might lead a happy life or might die a horrible death from famine, war or genocide.

Pro-choice folks on the other hand might not have a bright line for when life begins, but feel that it is not right at conception. Maybe it is after the first trimester or maybe it is later and at the point when the fetus could sustain itself outside the womb.

So if we take the pro-life position as the starting point, then we can determine an accurate analogy. If life begins at conception, then terminating a pregnancy is ending a life. In other words it is murder. In fact, that is what pro-lifers have been saying for a long time.

Mike Huckabee wants us to believe that it isn't murder but slavery. If I understand slavery right, it is the imprisonment of another person for the purposes of free labor. It seems to me that giving birth to a child then putting it to work might be slavery. But killing the fetus denies it the ability to do work - force or unforced.

So why is Mike Huckabee moving away from calling it murder and saying it is slavery? I have some thoughts. First, I think he realizes that equating it to murder hasn't won the argument (because most people don't agree that life begins at conception).

So if the murder argument isn't working, Huckabee must have decided that he needs another more provocative analogy, even if the logic is insanely tortured and the new comparison is less appalling than murder.

Second, maybe he thinks some people of color, maybe those that are religious, will buy this argument. In other words, he thinks this seemingly clever turn of words will bring new people who have a history with slavery to support the pro-life cause.

Third, he probably thinks it is a clever trap for liberals. For so long liberals have been trying to make southern conservatives feel guilty about slavery. If he can convince people that abortion is slavery, liberals have to either say slavery isn't that bad, or that abortion is wrong.

No matter his reasons, his argument is clearly sophistry. But that isn't Huckabee's biggest problem with this abortion argument.

Huckabee's real problem is that he is looking for an easy win (with obviously flawed logic) instead of putting in the hard work on this issue to change minds. No matter what you call abortion (slavery or murder), the only way people will come to the pro-life side is if they believe that life begins at conception.

That of course is a tremendous challenge (because it goes against science and what feels like common sense). And it is a challenge Huckabee doesn't seem up to.