Republican presidential contender Dr. Ben Carson appeared on ABC’s The View on Tuesday, where he defended his pro-life stance on abortion under questioning from co-host Whoopi Goldberg.

“You sort of feel that there’s not a war on women, but there may be a war on what’s inside of women,” Goldberg told Carson. “Is that accurate?”

“We are killing babies all over the place,” Carson responded. “I’ve spent my entire career trying to preserve life and give people quality of life, even operating on babies in the womb, operating all night long sometimes on premature babies. And I get to meet those people when they’re adults, and productive adults. There is no way you’re going to convince me that they’re not important, that they’re just a mass of cells.”

“I wanna ask you this,” Goldberg countered. “Have you met with the women who have to make these horrendous decisions when they have to make them, of whether or not they can bring a child into the world? We talk about bringing children into the world all the time, but periodically, some women feel, ‘I just can’t.’ Are you empathetic to them?”

“I’m very empathetic,” Carson replied. “What I have said is that this is a job for us in the private sector. What we need to do is make sure that we provide adequate day-care centers for these mothers so that they can get their GED…”

Goldberg then interrupted to ask about educated mothers, mothers who are simply “making that decision.”

“Let me tell you a fact,” she continued. “A lot of those young girls who are having babies out of wedlock, when they have that first baby, they stop their education, and that child is four times more likely to grow up in poverty. We as a society have an obligation to do what’s necessary to stop that cycle from occurring.”

Co-host Joy Behar then chimed in to ask Carson whether the Republican Party believes in the other services Planned Parenthood provides, including birth control and mammograms (since debunked).

Carson responded by saying he does not speak for the Republican Party, but that he does support birth control.

“Here’s what I believe in,” Carson added calmly, “because I get sick and tired of people, particularly progressives, saying ‘Carson grew up poor, he must have benefitted from government programs and now he wants to withdraw all these programs.’ I’ve heard that so many times. It’s a bunch of crap. What I really want to do is provide people with a mechanism for coming out of a state of dependency, and climbing the ladder and becoming part of the fabric of America.”

A visibly agitated Behar then asked Carson how he could compare Obamacare to slavery when “19 million people have it.”

“I’ll tell you why,” Carson said. “Because this is supposed to be a country that is of, by and for the people. The government is supposed to be there to facilitate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. With this particular act, the government comes along and says, ‘Don’t care what you people think, this is what we’re doing, we’re cramming it down your throat, and if you don’t like it, too bad.’ It shifts the relationship between the people and the government. The people are supposed to be at the pinnacle. The government works for us. It’s not the other way around. We need to restore that.

Last month, Goldberg blasted critics of Planned Parenthood on the program, telling them to “Get out of my vagina!“