Mike Huckabee Asked If Denying Abortion to 10-Year-Old Rape Victim Is 'Too Extreme.' Here's How He Responds.

After Paraguay's recent decision to deny an abortion to a 10-year-old who was raped by her stepfather, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was asked by CNN host Dana Bash how he would respond as fellow Republicans say that policy is "too extreme."

The former Arkansas governor acknowledged during his "State of the Union" interview Sunday that what happened to the girl is "horrible" and a "terrible tragedy," but then made a strong argument for allowing the child to be born.

"Does it solve a problem by taking the life of an innocent child?" he asked, adding later: "When I think about one horror, I also think about the possibilities that exist, and I just don't want to think that somehow we discounted a human life ... Let's not compound the tragedy by taking yet another life."

Huckabee added that well-known Pastor James Robison was conceived as a result of a rape, and that his mother "begged" doctors in the 1940s to give her an abortion — but they refused. Now Robison heads a Christian relief organization Life Outreach International which cares for "hundreds of thousands of people across the world," Huckabee said, adding that none of that would have happened if Robison was aborted.

Bash countered with the difficulty of looking into "the eyes of a 10-year-old girl" and telling her she has to live with what happened to her for another nine months.

Huckabee was undeterred, again acknowledging the tragedy of rape but also pointing out that in abortion "there are two victims" — the child and the birth mother, who he said often live with guilt for many years after an abortion.

"Life is precious," Huckabee added. "Every life has worth and value ... If life matters and that's a person, then every life matters."

(H/T: The Huffington Post)

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