Rick Santorum’s critics consider him the perfect representative of the pro-life cause. For them, he’s sanctimonious, rigid, and a little weird. They couldn’t invent a better object for their scorn, at least not this side of Sarah Palin.
But Santorum truly is an excellent representative of his cause. Perhaps no politician in our national life has been so pointedly forced by circumstances to live up to his creed. If Santorum can seem too blithe and self-assured when he talks the talk, he has painfully walked the walk. The Santorums lost one child shortly after childbirth and have another who survived despite a grave, usually fatal, genetic disorder.
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Santorum’s accounts of these trials have been some of the most moving moments on the Republican campaign trail. The phrase “pro-life” is considered a tendentious label by supporters of abortion rights, but the Santorums show how apt it is. They have embraced life in all its glory and heartbreak, with a devotion borne of their ideals and a humility brought by their experience.
Santorum’s wife, Karen — now the mother of seven — was pregnant when the then-Pennsylvania senator was leading the fight in the mid-1990s against partial-birth abortion. The couple learned that the fetus had a small, although usually fatal, defect. Doctors suggested a long-shot procedure that worked, but with risk of infection. Soon, Karen had a 101 temperature on the way to 105.
Karen began to go into labor. On a sonogram, she could see her healthy baby. She knew that if she delivered him now, at just 20 weeks, he wouldn’t live. Delirious with fever, she begged the doctors to stop her labor at the risk of her own life. In the end, she delivered Gabriel Michael, who lived two hours.
“I knew,” she told The New Yorker, “I was going to give birth and I would not hear the baby cry.” A former neonatal nurse, Karen couldn’t bear to send the baby to the morgue. She and Rick stayed in the hospital room with him overnight and then brought him home so their other kids could see their brother before he was buried.
This is where the “controversy” comes in. Liberal Fox News commentator Alan Colmes said the other day that it was “crazy” for the Santorums to bring home the baby, a comment he quickly apologized for. In more judicious language, The New York Times Magazine wrote in a Santorum profile that some would find the Santorums’ decision “discomforting, strange, even ghoulish.” Have these people never heard of a wake?
How is a family supposed to deal with the death of a child? Among some on the left, there’s an instinctive reaction against how the Santorums handled their loss because the logic of abortion rights denies that there is any loss worth troubling over. The Santorums accepted their grief, and when life presented them with another wrenching challenge, accepted it in turn.
Karen gave birth years later to a daughter with trisomy 18, a usually fatal genetic disorder similar to Down syndrome. The Santorums took their daughter home with the warnings that she wouldn’t long survive ringing in their ears. They had to lobby the hospital to give them a prescription for oxygen. A doctor advised them, “You have to learn how to let go,” an anodyne sentiment with a sinister undercurrent. Heroic care kept Bella alive. In a heart-rending moment at an Iowa forum, Santorum related his crushing realization that he had quietly determined to love Bella less to cushion himself against her loss. She’s now three years old.
Santorum can come across like the Saturday Night Live version of Tim Tebow, who is so overeager when Jesus visits the Denver Broncos locker room that even his Lord and Savior asks him to “take it down a notch.” Santorum will always be a ripe political target. Few politicians, though, have his credibility as a champion of people who refuse to learn how to let go.
There is nothing weird or ghoulish about what the Santorum family did after the death of their child. Indeed what has happened to many families is a realization of the fragility of life and death and our true need to appreciate what we have in one another. I can personally attest to such a loss and know many families whose love for their child prompted such acts of respect.
Alan Holmes and the New York Times are a part of the "crazy" mentality that turns logic and common sense on its head. It is their calloused attitude toward life that created Kermit Gosnell of Philadelphia, Steven Brigham of New Jersey and Planned Parenthood protecting pedophiles from justice. It is time for people to stop and think - what IS life all about - if not living in relationship with God and one another in a society that respects life, liberty and opportunity.
Well I can think of at least 1 organization that has Santorum's unyielding support, that is much more successful at protecting pedophiles from justice than Planned Parenthood.
Indeed Holmes said was crass and contemptible. But just as contemptible (more contemptible, in my book) would be the pro-life interviewer who accused the Santorums of "murdering their baby" had they chosen to follow their doctors' advice.
So since Santorum chose to "walked the walk", does that mean he should be able to force anyone else in the same situation to walk the same walk, regardless of their own wishes?
If "pro-abortion" was indeed the mirror image of "pro-life", they would advocate for forcing the Santorums to induce labor to protect Mrs. Santorum from potentially lethal complications. Nobody who is "pro-choice" is advocating for anything like this (and if anybody did, they aren't competing in elections or promoted by a major party).
The Santorums got to make the decision that was best, for them. It's too bad that Rick Santorum thinks what's right for him should be required for all.
I agree wholeheartedly with the first comment and with Rick Lowery's thoughtful piece. Anyone who has ever lost a child knows the crushing grief that possesses you and even if or when it turns to a dull ache, it never ever leaves you. Life is precious, children are precious and they do not need to justify their existence or their importance. I respect Rick Santorem's faithful adherence to his creed in spite of the monolithic pressures of this culture pushing hard to send all of us in the other direction. I had not really thought about supporting him but I have decided to send him a contribution and begin some serious advocating in my own small corner of the world. Again, thanks to Rick Lowery for a fine article.
"Among some on the left, there’s an instinctive reaction against how the Santorums handled their loss because the logic of abortion rights denies that there is any loss worth troubling over."
Would you care to back that up with evidence? I live in a very blue town in a very blue state, and I don't know a single pro-choice person who wouldn't see what happened to the Santorums as anything less than tragic. Would I react the same way if I was in the same situation? I don't think so, but I'm beyond grateful that my three children were born full term and healthy, so I will never need to find out.
Alan Colmes, a liberal Fox News commentator, didn't appear to view the Santorums loss as tragic when he mocked them for their response to it. He later apologized, but the kind of person you describe would never have made those hateful comments in the first place.
There is a fundamental difference between the way in which pro-life advocates and pro-choice advocates view an unborn child and that difference is not eliminated because some pro-choice advocates sympathize with the Santorum family's loss. After all, their child died after he was born, not before.
Alan Colmes was an a** for making those comments. However, he doesn't live in my town, so I stand by what I wrote.
I never said that there aren't fundamental differences between pro-life and pro-choice people. But you can be pro-choice and still feel that day you had a miscarriage was the worst day of your life. I know I did.
Rick (my former senator) is admirable on issues of life.
But this is not an election about social issues. Focus, fellow conservatives, on the prize: the country faces a choice between BHO's utopian vision of a sclerotic soft tyranny or Conservatives's vision of freedom. Pro-life issues are second nature, at best.
NRO: the more you boost social conservative issues at the expense of the freedom-from-tyranny agenda, the more you consign us to a future of government servitude. You will have your "no abortions anywhere, anytime" anyhow since the government-run-healthcare won't be able to afford to run abortion clinics!
If the election is about American Freedom than the Pro-Life issue is front-and-center. Without the Right to Life there can be no Liberty, no Pursuit of Happiness. Even the least among our people must be assured that they can not be murdered.
If you sell out on abortion you've already proven you don't take our Inalienable Rights seriously. The rest are up for sale too and we're just haggling about the price.
This is absolutely why the pro-life issue matters.
Our economic/fiscal disaster is at its roots, a moral issue.
Saddling future generations with unsustainable debt is a MORAL issue.
The unraveling of our social fabric is at its roots, a MORAL issue, as the collective character of the nation walks away from its obligations (marital, parental, societal, (gasp!) spiritual)..
While we remain incapable of "legislating morality", can we not at least protect the most innocent and helpless among us?
Abortion not only destroys an innocent life but permanently scars two others as well.
Roe v. Wade may never be overturned in my lifetime, yet a leader who values the protection of the unborn (who cannot speak) seems more likely to value my individual rights as than one who remains callously indifferent to the plight of the unborn..
After nearly 40 years of abortion on demand, the national mood has shifted, and the pro-life position championed by Ronald Reagan is on the rise.
Ergo, according to you, women have no right to life themselves.
If a woman is forcibly raped by some stranger, you would demand that she bear the stranger's child. Go through pregnancy, go through labor, the whole thing, for a pregnancy that was forced upon her by someone she doesn't even know.
Right?
Where does her right to life come in?
How would you suggest compensating her for the suffering she would be enduring?
No need to worry about contraception anyway. The Hispanics coming into the United States don't believe in it and are producing enough kids to make them the next racial majority. Most of them don't believe in abortion either. Being Catholic, Rick will really appreciate all that.
Gee yeah, HB, but unfortunately you guys are also the party of Sheila Jackson Lee, Alcee Hastings, Charlie Rangel, John Conyers, Henry Waxman, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Kucinich, Al Franken, Jesse Jackson, Jr., to name of few.
Santorum is no different than many thousands of other Americans who have had to deal with children with defects and so on. In fact, many Americans have difficulties in this area which far exceed that of Santorum and his family. And keep in mind that Santorum is probably far better off economically than many (if not most) of such families who have to bear these burdens. Praising Santorum is like praising some rich guy who managed to get a plush military job and stay in the states during World War II. The most such people "suffered" was from Home Front Rationing, and then attempted to compare their "scarifice" with those who were in combat or prisoners of war. Give me a break!!! Just because someone is pro-life (whatever that means in detail) does not mean that he or she is going to do a good job as President. What we need now is a George Washington, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson. Compare what we need to what we are getting. Did anyone ever ask John Adams if he were pro-life??!! Pro-life is not our major issue now. Our economy is!!
"Just because someone is pro-life (whatever that means in detail) does not mean that he or she is going to do a good job as President."
In your humble opinion, maybe, but others might believe that the way a person views the value of a single human life might have an impact on other decisions/views that person might have.
Politicians (whatever party or ideology) can say they are pro-Life or whatever they want or need to say to win votes. However, I don't believe they really care about human life anymore than other people. I know some so called Liberals who care about people (and act accordingly) more than some so called Conservatives do. I think a lot of pro-Life types "care" about human life only up to the delivery room, and beyond that anyone is on their own what with Conservative support of cold blooded Corporations and the love of war that so called Conservatives seem to have. But basically, I think ALL politicians once they get elected and get power don't really give a darn about people.
I disagree. Ron Paul genuinely cares about the people. If you need proof, go look at his contributors. Last I checked there were 0 billionaires. Obama let GE get a 5 billion dollar refund with his tax code. Solyndra was given half a billion, in exchange for campaign support. There are other examples. Do the research. Democrats love corporations as much or more than Republicans. Ron Paul is "Mr. No" in Washington DC, because he refuses to let lobbyists peddle their goods with him. Yes he took earmarks. It was the only way to get the money back his constituents paid in to the federal government, but he doesn't like them because they buy votes for the incumbent.
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