In an interview with Jon Stewart of the “Daily Show” on Comedy Central last week, former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee blasted the false notion that common ground exists in the abortion debate.

The notion that there is common ground on killing children and hurting women has been repeatedly taken to task by pro-life advocates.

Huckabee said that abortion advocates don’t want to give an inch in the abortion debate by accepting even modest limits on abortion such as parental notification, which would allow parents to know when their daughters are considering the life-altering decision.

Stewart talked about how abortion advocates may have the best interests of women in mind, but Huckabee countered that pro-life advocates care for both mother and child.

“See, Jon, I don’t know of a pro-life person that believes if the mother’s physical health is in jeopardy that you just let the mother die in order to save the child. Your ideal would be to save both,” he said.

Huckabee added that there can be no common ground on abortion just as there was no common ground on the issue of slavery.

“I think one of the fundamental questions that we would have to come to is does a person have a right to own another person. That really is the issue. Can a person own another person? Can a mother totally own the child? Can the father totally own the child?” he asked.

“The question is, is that life inside the mother a human life? If it is, then that human life has equal value to the 70-year-old man, to the 7-year-old child. There is no point at which human life loses its intrinsic worth and value. Do we have the right to own another person?” the former Arkansas governor added.

“There’s an equality to human life. No one is worth more than another; no one is worth less than another,” he said.

Pressed further to accept the notion that there could be common ground, Huckabee said he would be willing to support efforts that truthfully reduce abortions and don’t just give more money to pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood.

“I would be certainly favorable to anything that helps us preserve every human life and to treat it with dignity and worth,” he said.

Huckabee also said the abortion debate itself is a place where both sides can be more hospitable than hostile to each other.

“We don’t need to shout at each other and we sure don’t need to shoot each other,” Huckabee said.

During the discussion, Stewart said he identifies more with the pro-abortion camp but admitted he’s in “the squishy middle” of the debate.