Santorum: Rape Victims Should 'Make Best of a Bad Situation' and Choose Life
GOP Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, known for his staunch conservative views, emphasized his opposition to abortion – even in cases of rape or incest – during a recent CNN interview, saying that life is a gift and women facing those circumstances should "make the best out of a bad situation."
In a Jan. 20 airing of "Piers Morgan Tonight," Morgan questioned Santorum about his "hardened abortion stance" as he has grown older and what caused it.
"Life. You know, when I decided to run for public life, I was informed very quickly people wanted to know what my position on that was," Santorum responded. "So I went through the process of trying to better understand the facts."
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"It became very clear to me that life begins at conception and persons are covered by the Constitution and since life – people, a human life is the same as a person, to me it was a pretty simple deduction to make. That's what the Constitution clearly intended to protect," he said, according to a transcript of the program.
Morgan pushed the issue further, inquiring about whether the situation would be different if one of Santorum's daughters became a victim of rape and sought out his help on what to do about the resulting pregnancy.
"It's an almost impossibly hypothetical thing to ask you, but there will be people in that position, and they will share your religious values," Morgan said.
According to the Republican candidate, he would do what every father must do and try to advise his daughter to do the right thing. However, Santorum said it is not "a matter of religious views."
When Morgan suggested that advising his daughter to keep a child conceived in rape could ruin her life, the former Pennsylvania senator said an abortion could cause the same result, noting that he would love and support his daughter through such a difficult time.
"Well, you can make the argument that if she doesn't have this baby, if she kills her child, that too could ruin her life. And this is not an easy choice," he said. "I understand that. As horrible as the way that son or daughter was created, it still is her child. And whether she has that child or doesn't, it will always be her child."
"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 very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you," he said, adding "we have to make the best out of a bad situation."
Santorum's response has seen backlash, with many appalled and outraged. Regardless, observers say, given his pro-life stance, his comments should come as no surprise.
"Let me preface this by saying I neither agree with nor support Rick Santorum's position here, and I think the guy is loathsome for a lot of reasons. Nor do I have an opinion on abortion one way or the other," said one online reader.
"That being said, if you believe that life occurs at conception, and that all life should be protected, then this is actually an intellectually consistent position to take is it not?"
However, another user disagreed, saying, "His position fails to take into consideration the impact a pregnancy under such circumstances could have on someone's life. It is easy to understand and to accept that pregnancy is one of the risks of being sexually active, but the suggestion that someone who becomes pregnant by force should, in effect, just accept it and possibly throwing their lives off track as the result of being raped is unconscionable bordering on barbaric."
