In an interview on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" on Sunday, GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee reiterated his abortion position that he espoused in Thursday's presidential debate, saying that constitutional rights should be granted to fetuses and hinting that he could deploy the National Guard to forcefully stop abortions.
Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, said he wants to "guarantee due process under the Fifth Amendment before you deprive someone of their life and liberty," reported The Washington Examiner.
"It means, under the 14th Amendment, there's equal protection under the law," Huckabee explained. "Exactly how that plays out is one of the ways we discover: What does it take for Americans to finally wake up to the fact that we are violating the constitutional rights of human beings?"
In "the past, presidents have employed many different ways to make sure that" constitutional rights are upheld, Huckabee said, alluding to the use of the National Guard to enforce desegregation laws.
He continued: "We can't keep defending the loss of 60 million human lives over the past 42 years. We're not acting like a civilized people in the way in which abortion is in its unrestricted fashion has continued. And even the politicians who pretend that they're not really for it - they're personally against it - they'll say things like 'let's keep it safe, legal and rare.' It's not safe."
"I don't think it's legal," he said. "I think it violates the Fifth and 14th Amendment rights of an unborn person. And it certainly isn't rare; it happens 4,000 times a day. That's hardly rare."
Huckabee also hinted in July that he would consider using the FBI or National Guard to end abortion by force, according to Mother Jones.
During the Thursday Republican primary debate, Fox News debate moderator Chris Wallace asked Huckabee about his support for a constitutional amendment banning abortion. Huckabee responded that he believes a constitutional amendment is a long and difficult process and instead favors a position that's "bolder than that."
"I think the next president ought to invoke the Fifth and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, now that we clearly know that that baby inside the mother's womb is a person at the moment of conception," he said. "This notion that we just continue to ignore the personhood of the individual is a violation of that unborn child's Fifth and 14th Amendment rights."
While the Supreme Court has upheld the right to have an abortion, Huckabee said that "it's time that we recognize the Supreme Court is not the supreme being."
Watch Huckabee's full interview below:
