Cuccinelli links fights against slavery, abortion

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia Democrats are reaching for the hottest of hot-button issues nearly eight months before this year's gubernatorial election, slamming Republican Ken Cuccinelli for equating slavery abolition to today's anti-abortion movement.

A Democratic Party tracker's video shows Cuccinelli last summer telling a small gathering of religious conservatives that "the truth demonstrates its own rightness" through American history starting with opposition to slavery 150 years ago and continuing to abortion now.

Democrats sought to use the video to attack Cuccinelli as being too extreme.

Cuccinelli spokeswoman Anna Nix called it Democrat Terry McAuliffe's effort to shift the race away from job creation toward divisive issues.

A Virginia grandson of slaves and the nation's first elected black governor, Democrat Doug Wilder, says suggesting moral equivalence between slavery and abortion was outrageous and ignorant.