Religious right spokeshole Rick Santorum is in the news today for playing the race card on President Obama, by comparing legal abortions to slavery.

Discussing Obama’s views on abortion during a two-hour sit-down with CNS News on Thursday, Santorum said the president’s pro-choice position meant he was valuing some lives over others.

“The question is, and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer — is that human life a person under the Constitution?” he said. “And Barack Obama says no. Well, if that human life is not a person, then 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.’”

That might seem pretty tone-deaf (to say the least), but this kind of talking point is very common among anti-choice fundamentalists like Santorum. They see the issue in stark black and white with no room for reasonable people to disagree, which means that those who support safe, legal abortions aren’t just mistaken or wrong — they’re evil. And evil monsters are capable of anything; slavery, mass murder, genocide, every hideous crime.

That absolutist world-view is also what drives the periodic eruptions of violence from the more extreme anti-choice groups. If your enemies are committing mass murder of innocents on a gigantic scale, anything is justified if it stops them.

After the statement above, Santorum followed up and made this demonization even more explicit.

For decades certain human beings were wrongly treated as property and denied liberty in America because they were not considered persons under the constitution. Today other human beings, the unborn of all races, are also wrongly treated as property and denied the right to life for the same reason; because they are not considered persons under the constitution. I am disappointed that President Obama, who rightfully fights for civil rights, refuses to recognize the civil rights of the unborn in this country.