Did Chris Matthews Really Compare Kansas' Abortion Regulations to Racist Jim Crow Efforts?

On Thursday night's episode of MSNBC's "Hardball," host Chris Matthews compared the way in which Kansas' new abortion regulations were implemented to the instillation of Jim Crow laws in the South. He said:

...is this basically setting a whole bunch of conditions like they used to do with literacy tests in the South to keep blacks from voting. Is this a bunch of regulations that basically kill any chance of having an abortion legally in Kansas?

While Matthews does, indeed, go on to claim that his analogy isn't "exactly parallel," the comparison is a bit outlandish. Jim Crow laws were tragically utilized to discriminate against a specific race. It is hard to imagine that new regulations being set in Kansas at all compare to the livelihoods that were destroyed through institutional racism.

At the least, Matthews comments were over-the-top. Watch the video for yourself below:

(h/t Newsbusters)