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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsKaren Santorum's Abortion Doctor Live in Boyfriend
Rick and Karen Santorum really take the cake in the "do as I say, not as I do" department. Building on earlier revelations that the Santorums themselves considered abortion for health reasons while Rick Santorum worked diligently to deny that right to others is the new revelation that Karen Santorum spent most of her 20s living with her much-older boyfriend out of wedlock. Oh yeah, and that boyfriend was an outspoken abortion provider, the kind of person her husband would very much like to throw in jail.
The detail in this story that seems to be grossing people out the most is that Karen, whose last name was Garver when she was living openly as the kind of fornicator she and her husband now claim is so sinful the government should work against you, was actually delivered by her boyfriend Tom Allen when she was born in 1960. I'm from a small town, so that probably doesn't have the effect on me that it does on people who aren't used to some of the uncomfortably close romantic entanglements people can get in. That this detail captures people's attention suggests that we've become a little too inured to the hypocrisy of right wingers who carry on---and Rick Santorum is the worst---about how the government should restrict contraception access and teach abstinence-only because sex outside of marriage is sinful and how abortion providers should be subject to criminal penalties. It's worth noting that when it comes to the black markets of the sort that conservatives wish to create around abortion, girlfriends and partners often get caught up in police stings, so if the laws the Santorums want were in place back then, it may not just have been Dr. Allen in danger but also a young Karen Garver. But even if not, since she lived with him for so long, she basically benefitted materially from "abortion money" he earned providing abortions, money that helped pay for her housing, if nothing else.
This entire story reveals why the collapse between personal belief and policy advocacy is making this country collectively stupider by the minute. The defense of the Santorums in light of Karen's past as the lover of an abortion provider is to brush it off and say people's beliefs change. And sure, she has every right to feel that her past was a mistake and to seek forgiveness from her God for her fornicating ways. The problem, of course, is that Karen and Rick Santorum want to take away the rights of others to do as they did and seek their own paths. They have every right to preach their religious dogma wherever they want. The problem is that Santorum continues to advocate for writing his and his wife's strange religious beliefs into law, even as they themselves weren't prepared as young people to pay the legal consequences for not adhering to their particular faith. It's a shame that such a fuss is being made over Karen Santorum's past. In a sane world, we'd be allowed to have our private lives be private. But since the Santorums want to strip you of your right to sexual privacy in order to have the government micromanage your sex lives, it's high time she be held to the standard she wants for you. After all, she's benefitted long enough from the freedoms that she and her husband want to take away from everyone else.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/01/17/the_anti_fornication_anti_abortion_wife_of_rick_santorum_lived_very_differently_in_her_20s_.html
Then of course, there is that abortion that she had around 2001 to save her life. I have no problem with the fact she had one with her husband's blessings but I find it ironic that Rick and Karen want to make sure no one else has the opportunity to save their own lives when something goes wrong during pregnancy.
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.
Now he claims it was not an abortion but was a medically induced birth. What the hell does he think they do during a second trimester abortion? That is the dead baby they took home so his other 3 kids could learn to love their brother Gabriel.
elleng
(130,732 posts)unless more than one abortion in her past, eh?
appleannie1
(5,062 posts)So, I would bet she used some form of contraception. He had kids to his first marriage and did not want more. Therefore there weren't any. And it certainly was not because of abstinence.
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)Then it may just as well be indicative of a vasectomy.
FarPoint
(12,287 posts)Yes it was.
Gore1FL
(21,098 posts)They were considering the procedure to save her life. She miscarried on her own.
She didn't end up having a medical procedure, but that was in consideration. That consideration is what they are denying others.
eyewall
(674 posts)that liberals want to tell everyone how they can live, what foods they can eat, where they can go, etc.
undeterred
(34,658 posts)that women always suffer psychologically from abortions. Even if they had one and felt fine about it at the time, they later change politics and suddenly get all guilty and preach that everyone else feels that way too... they put it up on billboards. They can't accept that everyone deals with this in their own way and projecting ones own experience doesn't help anything.
Maybe she had an abortion for out of wedlock pregnancy and now she's punishing herself by being ultra conservative, like that's going to make up for it.
Caretha
(2,737 posts)if Icky Ricky gets the Republican nomination for President. You think that Michelle Obama would have been able to have that in her past, or any other potential First Lady, and not be taken to the cleaners by the media. It's just to sexually delicious & scandalous to leave alone.
Laura Bush walked a very very fine line because of her teenage vehicular accident that killed her ex-boyfriend.
I say bring it on!!! In fact I'll bet Romney's campaign managers/advisors will bring this to the forefront pretty soon.
I'm enjoying this. Let them eat their own.....it saves the rest of us time & energy.
Seedersandleechers
(3,044 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)murray hill farm
(3,650 posts)Though off topic! Very cool hammock!
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)That hammock is awesome.
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)IggleDoer
(1,186 posts)... Should it surprise anyone that Ricky and his statements regard women as sluts, in need of being controlled by men?
marasinghe
(1,253 posts)furthermore, she's probably throwing the old creep's virility in the younger creep's face,
whenever she needs to take down his insufferable arrogance;
which must be more or less on a constant basis - judging from his public performances.
DCKit
(18,541 posts)After all, Rick is in receipt of (what my fundy father would call) "damaged goods", "a fallen woman".
What better way to get revenge on a guy than to use the full force of the Federal government to punish everyone in his field along with all women and fetii, or children born with serious (preventable) birth defects? It just makes sense to make everyone pay for this personal, perceived slight.
It's not as if Ricky will ever have the guts to walk up to Dr. Allen and punch him in the nose.
LiberalEsto
(22,845 posts)proposed policy based on personal jealousy
IggleDoer
(1,186 posts)... Dr. Allen delivered some of Karen and little Rickey's children. I'm not sure I'd want my wife's ex checking on her who-ha regularily.
Sounds like little Rickey has taken a rather liberal position on this, or he just can't control his woman.
LisaL
(44,972 posts)The article said last time this guy heard from her was 1988.
He delivered her as a baby!
beac
(9,992 posts)GeorgeGist
(25,311 posts)might be trying to get even with their past.
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)Error.
We need to be 100% accurate in dealing with these bastards. Santorum's own partial birth abortion bill contained an exemption for the LIFE (not 'health') of the mother.
You trot this in front of an audience that fact-checks, and it will burn. His own sponsored bill did not prohibit abortions in the case of the LIFE of the mother being threatened.
It would be nice if we could go to the mat with this, but unfortunately, THIS particular issue he is not a complete hypocrit.