Rick Santorum's Abortion Obsession

WASHINGTON -- Surging Republican presidential contender Rick Santorum appeared to have a cause that reemerged repeatedly when he was a United States senator and it wasn't about foreign policy or federal tax policy -- it was all about abortion.

According to an analysis of the then-Pennsylvania senator's utterances by the Sunlight Foundation, Santorum was obsessed with all things gynecological. Between Jan. 1, 1996, and January 3, 2007, his last day in the upper chamber, Santorum spoke the words "abortion," "partial-birth," "fetus," "fetal" and "womb" more than any other senator.

Santorum was also one of the more graphic orators during his 10 years on Capitol Hill. As the sponsor of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 to ban late-term abortions, he "uttered the following phrases more than anyone else: 'base of the skull,' and 'life of the mother,'" Sunlight's data fellow Lee Drutman wrote.

A full tally of Santorum's words about women's anatomy can be found here.

SLIDESHOW: Santorum's Abortion Obsession By The Numbers

Comments

[movingman64]

11:02 PM on 01/31/2012

Santorum suffers from vaginal envey!! but alot of married gay me do!!! when santorum is in the bathhouse or the peep hole movie theatres that married men frequent, he thinks his anus is a vagina!

[Honest Babe]

02:55 PM on 01/16/2012

Santorum would violate the Constitution by the establishment of his religious view on others. No where in the Constitution is it written that the moment sperm enters a woman's body that she is required to allow that sperm to fertilize her egg, and this is the kind of thinking behind restricting use of any contraception, the day after pill or early term abortions. His view is that even the possibility of a pregnancy endows those cells with protection. He is entitled to his own opinion and to practice that in his personal life, but he has no right to impose his extreme religious view on every woman. Men are free to make their choices, even to rape a woman if he can get away with it, but the woman would become the slave to this ideology.

[time2talk]

08:42 PM on 01/13/2012

When Rick Santorum gives birth he can then have some say about abortion rights. I have not passed any bills about what he has to do if he is diagnosed with prostate or testicular cancer. He can have that issue, but stay away from mine.

[MightyYowp]

01:01 PM on 01/08/2012

Maybe he wouldn't mention it so often if people didn't ask him about it.
I wonder if the Sunlighters compiled a list of times the interviewers asked him a question about it? Maybe the press would be labelled as "obsessed" with all things "gynological."
Its not like abortion is common political topic, right?

[Clarabell]

04:36 PM on 01/08/2012

It's a very common political topic, and used to try and snag votes from the gullible.

[synergie]

01:23 AM on 01/08/2012

That timing is interesting. 1996 is when he actually faced a situation in which the policies that he and his rhetoric advocate would have resulted in the death of his wife. Perhaps he's simply projecting his own guilt over the choices he and his wife were forced to make onto every other woman in America?

[montn2]

12:37 PM on 01/13/2012

They had the option/freedom to make that choice yet he wants to deny the same private decision to the rest of us......what gall.

[Honest Babe]

02:13 PM on 01/16/2012

At 19 weeks of gestation, the baby and the mother were both experiencing complications that would have likely killed his wife if she tried to carry the baby full term. They had induced labor - that is, forced an early delivery - at a time when the baby would most surely have died even if healthy. With spontaneous early delivery, the baby might have had a 30% chance of surviving at 23 weeks. This purposeful act to induce an early delivery, with the clear expected consequence that the baby would die is not different from the choice other mothers face. Pregnancy is, thankfully, usually no life threatening, but sometimes mother's, their families and doctors have to make the choice. Does a mother have the right to live, even if it means that the unborn child will not? The answer Santorum made for his own wife was yes, and I agree that that was the correct one for his wife and for every other woman who faces this choice.

[1differentdrummer]

11:35 AM on 01/07/2012

Would you buy a car from him? Not this child.

[MissingAmerica]

11:03 AM on 01/07/2012

This is a troubled guy. It was said "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Well, say hello to "fear itself", Santorum. This is a man who seems to have an irrational hatred of all things. He has overlooked nothing. While he touts his insanely dangerous views on what amounts to human rights and our Constitutional rights, he says nothing about the real issues. Bottom line here is that he would devote his time and power to systematically destroy this nation. We were the first nation founded upon humanity and wisdom. Laws are designed to serve humanity as a whole while giving each individual the right to personal choice, including the rights of a woman to choose what she does with her own body. In fact, I recall the line "one nation under God, indivisible with freedom and justice for all!" Note it said "under God", not "under Jesus". Jefferson explained this intentional wisdom to allow for all to believe as they choose. This man knows nothing of human rights or humanity. Obviously, he lost his seat in the Senate because others felt the same. We must work to be sure he doesn't get in at a higher level!

[Lacey Baughman]

10:31 PM on 01/07/2012

In my opinion the two most important amendments in our nation's history were the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments which greatly altered and bettered a flawed Constitution that (specifically) did not recognize the rights of blacks. The movement to abolish abortion is no different than the movement to abolish slavery. There is a need for the Constitution to include the civil rights of all human beings - no matter what color they are, or how old they are. Once conceived, and so long as the mother remains a U.S. citizen, the infant human being is also a citizen of the United States of America and is entitled to have his/her civil rights defended from all foreign and domestic threats. Pro-aboritionists, much like Slave Holders in the seventeen to mid-eighteen hundreds, tote "freedom of choice" not realizing that they are denying the freedom of choice from someone else. Welcome to the new Abolition movement. Abolitionists of today may seem like they have extreme views of our Constitutional rights, but so did the Abolitionists in previous the Civil War.

[cwebster]

11:03 PM on 01/07/2012

Nonsense. Life does NOT begin at conception...70% of fertilized eggs will spontaneously abort (40% due to a failure to implant). Believe all the hocus pocus you want, but do not try to force your notions of the rest of us. A fertilized egg (potential life) should not have more rights than the living human being carrying it, which is what you are proposing.

[synergie]

01:37 AM on 01/08/2012

Where does it state that upon conception, a citizen exists? It's BIRTH, not conception, conception is an idiotic point to confers anything.

Infancy doesn't start at conception, it starts at birth.

You're also stating that this "zygote citizen" is accorded a special privilege to threaten and feed off a born citizen, that it is allowed to invade her person against her will. What other citizen has the right to invade the body of another? Which citizen has the right to threaten her health? Which citizen has the right to feed off the body parts of any other living citizen? Do certain citizens also get to retain this right so that if they wish they may later invade other citizens bodies, for either pleasure or for sustenance should they require a meal or a kidney?

Slave holders were very much about saying that certain people didn't have rights to their own persons at all, and that others could use and abuse them at will, this is very much an anti-choice view. When you grant a cell absolute dominion over the body of a fully developed person, based entirely upon her sex, you're arguing the same things that the Slavers and slaveholders did, that certain people based upon their birth have no value, are not human and possess no autonomy that any born person does.

You're not an abolitionist, you're advocating slavery. Don't delude yourself, your extreme views don't put you on the side of the angels, quite the opposite.

[synergie]

01:25 AM on 01/08/2012

Also, that "under god" was added much later and was not a part of that pledge in the first place.

[montn2]

01:06 PM on 01/13/2012

Added in the 50's. In defense of the post, Jefferson and the authors of the Constitution/Bill of Rights referred to the "Creator". Jefferson and some of the other founding fathers were deists who believe in a supreme being but not that Jesus was the Son of God, simply a prophet.

[Honest Babe]

02:20 PM on 01/16/2012

Under god was added after about thirty years of intense lobbying by evangelicals to have it inserted.

[The Intellectual]

10:46 AM on 01/07/2012

Planned Parenthood performed 329,445 abortions last year. I am sure all the Liberal/Progressives on this page popped Champaign when they heard that news. Isn't that what you all are looking for Genocide for our future youth?? I mean think of that well over a Quarter Million pregnancies were terminated. Seems like we are going down the same road as China. We should be proud of the number 329,445 because it shows how inhuman we really are in the USA.

Liberal/Progressives won't be happy until that 329,445 turns into 1 million a year.

[Obamacrat]

11:11 AM on 01/07/2012

Oh, give me a break. You cry about fetuses, but care nothing for children. Newt wants to put them to work. The other GOP candidates want to take away children's food stamps, but they cry about zygotes and fetuses. Disgusting.

[The Intellectual]

02:13 PM on 01/07/2012

What is wrong with work? I have worked since I was 12 years old. I used to mow lawns in my neighborhood for cash. Work is healthy. That is why at my age which is 26 I am doing much better than many of my peers. I understand the value of the dollar and that hard work can bring you success. Children are not babies giving them responsibility is not a bad thing.
Take away Children’s Food Stamps?? Never heard that one. Where is this bill that wants to take away Food Stamps from Children? What the GOP does want to do is build a system that will that Food Stamps are for temporary use. Not for generations of your family.
What is better providing someone with food or teaching that person to provide for themselves?

[cwebster]

11:18 AM on 01/07/2012

I think your user name is a misnomer.
!) the correct spelling is champagne
2) no one wants an increase in abortion, but the only way to reduce the number is better education and contraception
3) genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group".
No one is forced to have an abortion.

[synergie]

02:06 AM on 01/08/2012

When you consider that black women apparently have a 4 times higher chance of dying with pregnancy than women of other racial groups, genocide fits their stance quite well. All this faux outrage over the abortions in this population is just to ensure that the mothers themselves are taken out. It fits with their policy actions as well.

Source: http://www.arhp.org/publications-and-resources/contraception-journal/march-2011

[Taisposo]

09:52 AM on 01/07/2012

President Santorum. Try saying that a few times and see if you don't throw up.

[synergie]

02:27 AM on 01/08/2012

I was feeling nauseated earlier, thanks for pushing me over the edge. :-(

[donnie-cheesehead]

09:47 AM on 01/07/2012

As we read this the weekend of Jan 7th, all the Bible Thumping
Lunatics are gathering in Texas to weed out the chaff as to give
the candidate with the highest degree of Lunacy their support.

So it will be Rick Santorum --- Not only filled with hate, but the guy
who brought his dead baby home to play with the kids. Christ, at least
Barbara Bush put hers in a canning jar.

[spinner49]

09:34 AM on 01/07/2012

Santorum likened gay marriage to polygamy like that's a bad thing. I don't understand his stance against polygamy. There are polygamous marriages all through the bible, and if it's in the bible it must be OK, right?

[montn2]

01:14 PM on 01/13/2012

Yep, Mitt can answer the polygamy issue with authority.....he was a bishop in the Mormon Church.

[Honest Babe]

02:39 PM on 01/16/2012

And his grandfather was a polygamist who left to go to Mexico when the practice was outlawed in the States. He was willing to give up his citizenship in order to continue the practice.

[brbrbca]

08:31 AM on 01/16/2012

You embarrasse yourself, fool.

[relentless63]

09:05 AM on 01/07/2012

Rick has no interest in Government affairs, but prefers personal involvement in social and religious issues. Pastor of his own church,maybe?

[joeg2028]

10:10 AM on 01/07/2012

Yeah, I think he's running for the wrong office. He should be trying to become pope. But first he has to become an Episcopal priest and then switch back to the Roman Catholic Church, in which a former Episcopal priest is now allowed to be a priest and remain married. Then he'll be on the fast track for the top job in Rome. Go, Richard.

[relentless63]

10:30 AM on 01/07/2012

F/F & LOL!

[heronpoint]

11:11 AM on 01/07/2012

Exactly what I was thinking. Then he could leave the rest of us alone.

[kathy smelser]

07:25 AM on 01/07/2012

just cannot wait ......a new law stating that if R S finds that you are not using your uterus to the best of its ability it will be taken to a secure location for safe keeping or budget cuts

[synergie]

02:32 AM on 01/08/2012

Do you remember The Handmaid's Tale? They seem to think it's a how to manual, so really, I don't think you're being as humorous as we'd all like you to be, more "prophetic". :D

[old wrangler]

07:41 PM on 01/13/2012

yes i do,ricks favorite book!!

[Jim Pasterczyk]

05:17 AM on 01/07/2012

Don't like it? Don't have one, but keep your sanctimonious nose out of other people's bedrooms and women's wombs.

[94613]

03:53 AM on 01/07/2012

Sanitorium Preaches, That Old Tyme Religion, Fire and BrimeStone. They'll be No Scarlet Letters in A Sanitorium Presidency. Scarlet Pimpernel's maybe....