You need a subscription to Time, but here’s the money quote:
Rick and Karen decided to fight for Gabriel’s life, which nearly cost Karen her own, and they passionately embraced the child during his two hours on earth. They have spent the past three years caring for their daughter Isabella, whose genetic defect, trisomy 18, is an early-death sentence. “Almost 100% of trisomy 18 children are encouraged to be aborted,” Santorum told Schieffer.
I am haunted by the smiling photos I’ve seen of Isabella with her father and mother, brothers and sisters. No doubt she struggles through many of her days — she nearly died a few weeks ago — but she has also been granted three years of unconditional love and the ability to smile and bring joy. Her tenuous survival has given her family a deeper sense of how precious even the frailest of lives are.
All right, I can hear you saying, the Santorum family’s course may be admirable, but shouldn’t we have the right to make our own choices?
Yes, I suppose. But I also worry that we’ve become too averse to personal inconvenience as a society—that we’re less rigorous parents than we should be, that we’ve farmed out our responsibilities, especially for the disabled, to the state—and I’m grateful to Santorum for forcing on me the discomfort of having to think about the moral implications of his daughter’s smile.
Inevitably public money finds its way into the care of severely disabled children...and that was even before ObamaCare.
I sure as heck don't want to subsidize Catholic zealots making faith-based, irrational decisions to have as many babies as possible and to preserve every one for as long as possible no matter the costs and hopelessness.
(I'd be willing to bet that some public money has found its way already into helping fund Santorum's choices. At the very least he is getting tax breaks, which is the same as handing him public money.)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWow. How do you define hopelessness? And the Catholics (I am not one) have spent much more private money helping all Americans have access to healthcare than most of us would suspect. What is wrong with making Faith-based decisions? Were you implying that all Faith-based decisions are irrational?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo only childless candidates are fit to run for president?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@ Ed in Cary:
Jim Manzi just had a post regarding the reach of the welfare state into people's lives. It raises some interesting points.
That said,"tax breaks" are most certainly NOT "the same as handing [someone] public money."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo, what do we do with you in case you're in an unfortunate accident and severely disabled for life? Those "irrational Catholics" would probably like some direction.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"At the very least he is getting tax breaks, which is the same as handing him public money."
Only if all the money belongs to the government and we as subjects merely use it as they allow.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell, technically all U.S. currency is the property of the federal government, and destroying it for instance is illegal.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat comment is just beyond the pale Ed. If it's not a blatant troll you ought to rethink your humanity.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePlease someone tell Ed that a malicious left wing poster has sullied his name in the hope of making Ed sound like a militant secularist liberal. This couldn't really be the Ed we know could it?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseZealotry is now defined as the desire to a disabled child alive? Yikes. I'm what you'd call a libertarian soft pro lifer - I'd gladly vote for a fiscal conservative with respect for the constitution over the compassionate conservative type - but it's attitudes like that that make me consider that I'm morally repugnant for doing so. I see it on the left and the right - the belief that there is not - as Reagan said - value in each and every life.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEd, why is it you paint the most extreme scenario imaginable--that those scary RCs are going to churn out defective babies by the zillions, and you'll have to pay for them? The amount of money consumed by the occasional grossly handicapped child is nothing compared to the obscenity that is Medicare/social security/disability.
I for one would rather live in a society slavishly embracing life than a culture that casually makes room for death. A person who believes himself fit to decide when another person's life has value is very likely to be someone who doesn't truly value anyone's life but his own.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Ed, why is it you paint the most extreme scenario imaginable..."
Without commenting on the propriety of the statement as it relates to this specific discussion, I think the country could use a whole lot more imagining of "the most extreme scenario imaginable", particularly as it relates to the financial impact of legislation.
We didn't end up with a $15T deficit because politicians took care to account for the worst case scenarios or the (financial) unintended consequences of otherwise well-meaning Bills.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm happy Mrs. Santorum survived. I don't think all women should be forced to do what she did.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is amazing that the someone could read Joe Klein's remarks and say the things being said. We are discussing the care of the vulnerable. Have we progressed into such a utilitarian society that we care not for the weak and the dependent. Has the selfish Ayn Rand mentality blinded us from our concern for the least of these our brothers and sisters? Joe Klein recognized that all of us need to look deep within ourselves and ask some important questions about why we are even here.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is easy when one is on the sidelines to criticize the fellow on the field. But I think we should all consider walking a mile in his shoes before pulling out the knives to attack him.
Maggie, to your disgrace, you've been lying for Romney about what he did with marriage in Massachusetts, and I know why, but thank you for posting that.
Now, come clean.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf you know why, won't you please explain?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe funding for NOM coming from Romney backers.
She won't touch this:
External Link
And I suspect a like explanation covers why no one else at this publication will go near it, either. But that's hardly the only thing off limits around here. (Consider that NRO's inexplicable -- actually very explicable by my inferred hypothesis -- approximately six year crush on Romney).
Murdoch's piece doesn't cover Romney's other deception, on abortion. He was fully pro-life *before* he ran for Senate in Massachusetts, at least when it came to admonishing Mormon women not to have abortions. So, clearly, he had a pro-life position within the confines of his religious sect. Then he declared himself absolutely pro-choice for the Senate run and again when he ran for governor. After he became governor, he claims he had a revelation about abortion, and became pro-life. But, again, he had already been pro-life before he entered politics. So it was a double ruse. First to switch positions, then to claim a revelation of some sort (the real revelation was that he couldn't get the Republican nomination with a pro-choice position).
As a better than suspicious outsized example of how this goes, there's the in plain sight purchase of Clear Channel by Bain in 2008. Clear Channel owns the radio network that carries many of the bigtime conservative talk shows, such as Limbaugh and Hannity.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGiven that Santorum happily milked the state of Pennsylvania to educate his children while they were living in Virginia, I'm sure that the state and society aren't totally off the hook when it comes to helping his daughter.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI find it hard to believe that Ms. Gallagher had time to write this with the 9th Circuit's rejection of DOMA and prospects of gay marriage in Maryland.
Maybe both are too inconvenient with respect to her standard narrative on the state of same-sex marriage.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseConsidering that except for the well-off and comfortably rich (such as Joe Klein and Rick Santorum), most Americans are beset by a vast number of huge inconveniences (mortgages, pensions, insurance, the multiple jobs necessary to keep afloat, etc.) that they might be adverse to but certainly can't escape, I don't fault them either for actively choosing to have healthy children nor for looking to the state for assistance when they do end up with a special needs child.
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