"I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created - in the sense of rape - but nevertheless a gift in a broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given you. As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can't think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation."
Rick Santorum
Santorum actually believes women are receiving a gift by being raped and impregnated by their attacker. In Santorum's world being raped is something women should put on their Amazon.com wishlist. Santorum then tells condescendingly tells women to tough it out and carry the fetus to birth. This man is insufferable.
Reactions from the feminist blogosphere.
Jill Filipovic
The thing is, we don't just "accept what God has given us" in a whole lot of circumstances. Like when God gives us cancer. Or when God gives us problems with a wanted pregnancy. We try to counteract the things that are physically or psychologically harmful to us, or things that we don't want to happen. And plenty of women do choose to give birth when they're impregnated by rape - that's a totally valid choice. But it's not one that should be forced on any woman, rape or no rape.
Robin Marty
Most candidates, when questioned on whether they could honestly force their family members to carry a pregnancy to term after rape, will at the very least hem and haw a little over the issue.
But not former Pennsylvanna Senator Rick Santorum. He says the baby is still a gift, and he would council his daughters to believe the same.
If you think Santorum has an empathy problem then you aren't the only one. Amanda Marcotte notes that Santorum has spent his career trying to deny the medical rights that saved his wife's life.
Most of us, when we suffer from a traumatic situation, find that it increases our empathy with others in similar circumstances, and many of us are driven to become activists fighting to make life easier for people in similiar situations. But for Rick Santorum, trauma drove him in the other direction: It decreased his empathy for others in similiar situations, and caused him to want to increase their pain and suffering. That's the lesson to be drawn from a profile of Santorum in the New York Times, which explains that after his wife Karen, got sick at 20 weeks of pregnancy and was spared the the spontaneous abortion/early delivery (the distinction is more cultural than biological), Santorum got busy making sure other couples in the same situation could never have the options and speedy medical care that helped saved Karen's life.
Santorum has no problem allowing women to die to please his religious worldview. No wonder Santorum views rape as a minor nuisance to women.
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