“I think it was much ado about nothing,” Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said about the Terri Schiavo case, a comment that may harm his appeal to pro-life voters. In a “persistent vegetative state” after a brain injury, Schiavo was allowed to starve to death at her husband’s instructions, despite a national outcry and the unsuccessful intervention of Carson’s fellow candidate, then Florida governor Jeb Bush, the U.S. Congress.

“We face those kinds of issues all the time and while I don’t believe in euthanasia, you have to recognize that people that are in that condition do have a series of medical problems that occur that will take them out,” Carson said, answering a Tampa Bay Times‘ reporter’s question after giving a speech in Orlando. “Your job [as a doctor] is to keep them comfortable throughout that process and not to treat everything that comes up.

When the reporter asked Carson if Bush or Congress should have intervened, he replied, I don’t think it needed to get to that level. I think it was much ado about nothing. Those things are taken care of every single day just the way I described.”

At the time of writing, the Carson campaign site has no comment posted. The Protecting Innocent Life page says “I am unabashedly and entirely pro-life. Human life begins at conception and innocent life must be protected,” but does not mention protecting people at the end of life.

The Bush campaign responded to Carson’s remark stressing that the former governor “has always advocated for a culture of preserving life. For him, being pro-life is not just about preventing deaths of the most vulnerable, but also about promoting human dignity and helping people preserve life. Governor Bush engaged on the issue and advocated for Terri Schiavo because he believes that when in doubt, it is important to err on the side of life.”

Popular Catholic blogger Kathy Schiffer, an admirer of Carson, wrote that he “has some ‘splainin’ to do to his pro-life Republican base.” She noted that a Catholic statement approved by Pope Benedict XVI says that “A patient in a ‘permanent vegetative state’ is a person with fundamental human dignity and must, therefore, receive ordinary and proportionate care which includes, in principle, the administration of water and food even by artificial means.”