In a 2012 speech at a pro-life banquet, Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson compared abortion to slavery and said those in the pro-life movement are similar to the abolitionists.
"I wasn't always (pro-life). You know I was a live and let live type of individual," the retired neurosurgeon said in a clip from his speech available on YouTube.
Carson said he used to think it was a "reasonable approach" to focus only on his own self-interests and let others do what they wanted until he "started thinking about a particular episode in the history of this nation, called slavery."
"The slave owners felt that they should be able to do whatever they wanted to do. And there were some people who were not slave owners who said 'uhh you can do what you want to do, but I don't, I think it's unethical, I wouldn't do it.''
"And then there were the abolitionists, who said not only will they not do it, but it is such an evil that they want to make sure that it is rooted out of our nation," he said. "And uh, I started seeing the similarities there."
"Because you see, many people believe that if there is a baby and it is in my uterus, my uterus, then I can do anything I want with it," Carson said.
Carson continued, saying, "the good lord put that fetus in supposedly the safest place it can possibly be on Earth."
"And does that convey the right to terminate it? It doesn't convey that right anymore than a slave owner had the right to terminate a slave. Some of them thought that they did have the right to do that, but fortunately our thinking on that issue evolved and it gives me hope that hopefully our thinking on this issue will evolve as well as we begin to actually think about the importance of life."
Carson's comments are similar to those made in the past by other pro-life politicians, including fellow Republican presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum.