More Shots At Santorum

Rick Santorum's candidacy may have a few problems on issues related to war and torture but he sure is touching some nerves with his social policy agenda. It seems he is not as easy to ignore as a few hundred thousand Walk For Life marchers. Kate Harding is the latest to take notice and respond to Santorum's comments about abortion.

As a lapsed Catholic turned atheist, a staunch feminist and someone who has a strong general aversion to sleazy, disingenuous men, I was shocked yesterday to find myself feeling something like respect for Rick Santorum, Pope Benedict XVI and Piers Morgan all in the space of three minutes.

Good to know where she is coming from. 

The three minutes in question are a clip from Morgan's interview with Santorum on the former's CNN talk show. In it, Santorum declares that even if his own daughter were raped – a hypothetical scenario both men manage to discuss with remarkable calm – the Roman Catholic presidential candidate would maintain his adamantly pro-life position regarding abortion.

I do think that candidates should just refuse to discuss hypothetical questions like that. It has become normal but it quite silly. Candidates should discuss matters of public policy. Nobody really knows what they would do when faced with a huge trauma like a family member being raped. This is sentimentalism in action. We want to put your moral code to some kind of emotional acid test. But the right thing to do can be hard in some scenarios. Often it is not as hard as we imagine it will be. A woman can love her child even if it is the product of rape.

I sincerely feel a tiny, grudging mote of respect for that degree of consistency. As anti-choice zealots go, those who will take the "baby killer" argument to its extreme appeal to me slightly more than those who can say with a straight face that abortion is murder, except when the woman didn't want to have sex.

This is good. Consistency is critical. It is either a baby or it isn't. The rape exception is mostly crafted to take the very rare scenario off the table. Focus on the most common abortions. Once we agree that those are wrong we can talk about the hard cases.

Of course, that's the beginning and the end of my respect for Santorum, who had the gall to tell Morgan that his opposition to legal abortion is "not a matter of religious values". He insists that it's founded on his interpretation of the US constitution, as opposed to his interpretation of the teachings of Jesus Christ: "[L]ife begins at conception and persons are covered by the constitution, and because human life is the same as a person, to me it was a pretty simple deduction to make that that's what the constitution clearly intended to protect."

It is not even the constitution. The notion that life begins at conception is a scientific one. It has biblical support but previously many Christians believed that life began at quickening. That is the time when a woman can first feel the baby in her womb. Nobody believes that anymore because the science has shown it to be incoherent.  The fetus is a living thing from the moment of conception. It's species is human.

Once you grasp that then you can take a lot of different roads to arrive at the position that it is immoral to kill it. Moral thinking varies a lot from person to person but most people accept that an innocent human life deserves the protection of the law. Christianity says it. The US Constitution says it. Kantian morality says it. There are lots of ways to get there. If fact, you would have to wonder about any moral system that does not say innocent human life deserves protection under the law. That is the big letter E on the top of the moral eye chart. Everyone gets this one right.

Hang on, I need a moment. Reading those words just gave me a bad flashback to tutoring hopeless freshman composition students in a university writing lab.
We're to believe that Santorum's desire to overturn Roe v Wade is "not a matter of religious values", yet, when discussing a hypothetical pregnancy by rape just moments later, he says: "I believe and I think that the right approach is to accept this horribly created, in the sense of rape, but nevertheless, in a very broken way, a gift of human life, and accept what God is giving to you." ("In the sense of rape." Deep breaths, Kate.) "Gift from God," "person under the law" – why quibble about semantic differences? The point is: Life! Glorious life! Santorum will defend it!

 OK, so you do think life is worth protecting. Then why are you pro-abortion? It boggles the mind that that never needs explaining. It is like the default position. I might get kicked out of the feminist club if I was pro-life.

And here's where my blip of respect for Morgan comes along. "I know that your position is – correct me if I'm wrong – that you believe in the sanctity and the innocence of life. How do you equate that with supporting the death penalty?" he asks. Boo-yah! I dearly wish more American reporters would put that question to self-styled "pro-life" candidates who evince little interest in the sanctity of human life ex utero.
That brings us to my smidgen of respect for Pope Benedict XVI – and for that matter, John Paul II before him – for making it clear that Catholic doctrine, in a moment of convergence with common sense, holds that a pro-life position contraindicates revenge-killing born people. "It cannot be overemphasised that the right to life must be recognised in all its fullness," Pope Benedict said in 2009, praising the abolition of the death penalty in Mexico. So at least in that one respect, Santorum can truthfully say that his political intentions are not based on his professed religious values.

This is not exactly a "Boo-yah!" moment. There is a distinction between killing an innocent human being and killing someone who has committed a serious crime. Every Catholic should have serious reservations about the state taking any life precisely for the reason Pope Benedict gives. But there is a balancing concern. How to properly address what this person has done. One can reasonably say the right to life still trumps everything but one can also reasonable say there are cases where it does not.

Still, if you can't even speak for a whole minute on a political issue without invoking "God's will" as a supporting argument, you have no business running for president of a country whose constitution actually – no weasel words or tortured logic necessary to make this case – enshrines freedom of religion. That alone should be enough to make any American who truly loves liberty and the vision of the "founding fathers" lose all respect for Rick Santorum as a politician.

That would be the same constitution that says "all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights?" How is that different from talking about "God's will?" Santorum does not invoke God's will when talking about taxes or foreign policy. Just when talking about issues of life and marriage. Where should he get his ideas about the value of human life and the importance of marriage? From Kate Harding? 

But if you're not persuaded by that, just try remembering that he said becoming pregnant by a rapist is a gift from God. Out loud. With a camera on him. And he wants to be president of a country that has women in it.
What does this man have to do to get drummed out of the race?

That is what it means to say every person is a gift from God. Not just when mom and dad are in love and planning to conceive.  Everyone, regardless of the circumstances of their birth. If not, then when does that human life become valuable? Would it be OK to kill that child as an infant or a toddler? He or she remains the product of a rape. You worry about consistency. Where is the consistency in valuing the lives of those who are born but not those very same lives prior to birth?