Let's get down to brass tacks: Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, Personhood Pledge-signing, Griswold vs. Connecticut-opposing, Mr. Ban Abortion in All Circumstances With No Exception for the Life of the Mother, believes that the actions of his own wife should be treated as criminal. Why? Because, back in 1996, his wife had a procedure that resulted in the deliberate death of her fetus, even though it was a matter of saving her own life.
Karen Santorum's difficult pregnancy and resultant life-saving, induced early delivery is no secret; in a 2004 interview with NPR's Terry Gross, her husband characterized the 1996 procedure as a harrowing but necessary. Karen, in her 19th week of pregnancy, received a risky surgery to save a pregnancy that doctors thought had little chance of survival. After the surgery, she came down with an infection, and doctors told Rick that unless the source of the infection — the fetus — was removed, his wife would die and his already-born children would be motherless. The doctor also told Santorum that his wife's fetus would not survive outside of the womb. According to Santorum, Karen went into labor as a result of the antibiotics, and then doctors gave her a drug that further induced labor. She delivered, and unfortunately the doctors were right.
Shortly after Santorum first talked to the press about his wife's pregnancy and their subsequent loss, rumors began circulating that Karen had actually had an abortion rather than induced delivery. Our Silver Ribbon goes so far as to assert that Karen Santorum did, in fact, have a second-trimester abortion.*
This from a man who likes to stand at the pulpit of the people and proclaim himself to be the purist of the pure, the creme de la creme... what a steamy load of shit.
