June
3, 2003, 10:00 a.m. Worth
the Fight
Senator
Santorum tells the story of a C-SPAN miracle.
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Friday night, Pennsylvania senator Rick
Santorum (R.) and his wife, Karen Garver Santorum, received an award
from the Sisters of
Life, the order of religious sisters founded by the late John Cardinal
O'Connor in 1991. The Sisters were established, according to the late
cardinal archbishop of New York, to "restore to all society a sense
of the sacredness of human life." (To read more about the Sisters,
click
here.)
The John Cardinal
O'Connor Award was given to the Santorums in recognition of "the
courage, nobility, and love with which they live their vocation to marriage
and family life," Mother Agnes Mary, the superior general (a former
professor at the Teacher's College at Columbia University) of the Sisters
of Life said. "They have publicly witnessed to a private suffering
shared by many families throughout the world." In 1998, Mrs. Santorum
published Letters
to Gabriel, a memoir of her pregnancy and the 20-week life of
their fourth child, Gabriel Michael Santorum. Gabriel was born prematurely
and died two hours after being delivered.
After a few weeks
under an extra-hot spotlight, following comments made to an Associated
Press reporter (who just happened to be married to Democratic presidential
candidate Sen. John Kerry's campaign manager) about homosexuality and
other lightening rods, the senator obviously appreciated the warm, familiar
audience of mostly Northeast Corridor Catholics on Friday night. To the
receptive audience, most, if not all, genuine pro-life advocates —
especially the sisters, who as the senator noted with awe, are the face
of love, a face the anti-abortion movement needs to be constantly and
consistently and forthrightly dedicated to — the senator recounted
the story of what was considered a legislative loss, but wound up a true
win for human life.
It's a story he has
told a few times now — most recently at his commencement addresses
this year at St.
Joseph's University and Christendom
College — but that not enough people have heard. It's a reminder
that the fight is often worth the effort, even when you technically lose
in the eyes of most of the world — and you may not always know the
fruits of your work, either.
Here's the story,
as Santorum tells it; he was fortunate enough to find out how he won during
what would have otherwise been considered a legislative defeat:
In 1998, I was
on the floor of the United States Senate debating the override of the
president's veto of the partial-birth-abortion bill. The next morning
was to be the vote. We did not have the votes to override the president's
veto. The debate had ended that night, it was eight o'clock. The Senate
was wrapping up, but there was something inside me that felt that I
had to say more, even though there was no one left in the chamber besides
the presiding officers. I went back in the cloakroom and called my wife.
She picked up the phone and we have six little children and they are
all seemingly at once crying in the background, and I said, "Karen,
the vote's tomorrow. We are not going to win and everybody's gone. But
something tells me I need to say more." And through the din of
the children crying, she said, "well, of course, if that's what
you need to do, do it."
So I went to the
presiding officer and said, "I'll only be a few minutes, I don't
want to keep you late." Over an hour and a half later, I finished
my talk.
….And we finished
up the Senate and closed it down, and the next day the vote came, [and]
not one vote changed. But five days later, I got an e-mail from a young
man at Michigan State University. And this is what the e-mail said:
"Senator, on Thursday night I was watching television with my girlfriend.
We were flipping through the channels and we saw you standing there
on the floor of the United States Senate with a picture of a baby next
to you. And so we listened for a while and the more we listened the
more we got interested in what you were saying. After a while I looked
down at my girlfriend, and she had tears running down her face. And
I asked her what was wrong, and she looked up at me and said, 'I'm pregnant,
and tomorrow I was going to have an abortion, and I wasn't going to
tell you, but I'm not going to have an abortion now.' "
In April of that
year, a little girl was born and given up for adoption. She is four
years old today. Now according to the world, when I spoke on the floor
of the Senate that night, I had failed. I did not succeed. But God gave
me a gift that many of you as you stand and fight the causes that you
believe in may never get, He gave me the gift of knowing that faithfulness
to what you believe in can lead to wonderful acts and wonderful miracles.
The Lord works in
mysterious ways — even through C-SPAN.
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Friday night, Pennsylvania senator 
