(ThyBlackMan.com) One week after Rick Santorum barely lost the Iowa Caucuses to Mitt Romney we find him at the back of the pack in the returns from the New Hampshire primary. Santorum’s meteoric ascent and just as swift fall from grace I declare as a victory for women.
Modern elections in the U.S. — especially this early in the campaign — have never really been about the real issues facing our country. They have instead been about the most sensational topics that will derail an electorate into voting for a candidate against their interests because they happen to identify with that candidate on an idea not really relevant to one voters day to day life.
One of those issues is abortion. It is the lightening rod topic that comes up in nearly every election forcing candidates to pick a side. Before it was either pro-life or pro-choice. Now there are sub-categories of commitment to the pro-life cause. You’re either pro-life yet allow exceptions in the instances of 
rape, incest and when the life of the mother is in danger. Or you’re pro-choice and believe the only exception is when the life of the mother is in danger like Rick Perry. Or you’re pro-choice and believe there should be no exceptions what-so-ever, ever like Rick Santorum.
Rick Santorum is so far right on the issue of abortion he believes the Supreme Court decision that allowed birth control to be released to women en masse was wrong and judicial activism.
In Griswold v. Connecticut the Supreme Court ruled in a 7-2 decision the United States Constitution protects our right to privacy and states, specifically Connecticut in this case, have no right to prohibit the use of contraception. Santorum believes this decision is wrong. Private citizens have no right to privacy in their private sexual lives because our sexual lives are wrong.
This my friends is coming from a limited government Conservative. I would say this rhetoric is shocking, only it’s not because we all know limited government conservatives pick and choose on what issues the government should be limited.
“I’ll repeal all funding of abortion. We’ll repeal Obamacare and get rid of any idea that you have to have abortion coverage or contraception coverage. One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country and the whole sexual libertine-idea many of the Christian faith have said, “Well, that’s okay. I mean, you know contraception okay.”” It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is that is counter to what, how things are supposed to be.”
~ Rick Santorum from his October 18, 2011 interview with CaffeinatedThoughts.com. (fast forward to the 17 minute mark for his thoughts on abortion and contraception)
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Rick Santorum goes on to say sex is expressly designed to live within the confines of marriage and is for the sole purpose of procreation. It’s for pleasure too he admits but that’s not the end goal. This portion of his statement I can agree with. Everything else before it he get’s the deuces.
The reason being is that Rick Santorum admits his crusade against contraception is a faith based initiative. I have no problems with faith or adhering to specific religious doctrine. I do have a problem with that dogmatic way of life being impressed upon me without my consent. That is how dictatorships are created. Just because Rick Santorum and his supporters believe contraception is wrong because it deconstructs sex and abortion is wrong because it ends a potential life does not mean he should govern; especially from a Federal level from that point of view when.
- Faith based initiatives have no place in government if we have a separation of church and state.
- If you truly think such behavior should be limited by laws than as a conservative isn’t that something that should be regulated by states for state’s rights.
- And If that’s the case the Supreme Court has already said regulation of such a private matter is unconstitutional.
Rick Santorum’s extreme position on women’s Reproductive health comes amid accusations he does not practice what he preaches. A Jezebel article that delved deep into Rick Santorum’s past discovered his wife had a medically induced abortion to save her life. The decision to medically abort was made by Rick Santorum and his wife. It is a decision he says he disagrees with; though apparently not in the case of his own family.
His political position and personal actions are incongruent and show why such an extreme position cannot be maintained in a modern society; unless we institute an extreme form of Islamist rule where women are stoned for adultery, and honorably killed by dishonoring their family by having sex before marriage or babies out of wedlock.
Rick Santorum’s position on contraception is THE EXTREME in a year of extremes. Take Mississippi’s defeated personhood amendment that would have determined life begins at fertilization thus making hormonal birth control such as Plan-B, an emergency contraception, illegal. The personhood amendment while defeated is popular among GOP candidates. Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Ron Paul have all signed the Personhood Republican Presidential Candidate Pledge from Personhood USA. In Georgia a legislator there proposed a bill to make having a miscarriage punishable by death if a woman could not prove the miscarriage was due to natural causes. Similarly, Mississippi and Alabama already criminalize having a miscarriage the state of Georgia just took the next step.
The candidates signing of pledges on personhood, disavowing abortion under any circumstances, and Rick Santorum’s faith based initiative to restore families by banning contraceptives comes just two and a half years after the murder of Kansas late term abortion doctor, George Tiller. Tiller was murdered at his church by Scott Roeder who testified “you can’t play God, it’s wrong to take a life, I had to do it.” The GOP candidates stand on women’s reproductive rights comes at the same time a Florida man faces charges for firebombing an abortion clinic in Pensacola.
Whatever a candidate’s or an individual’s position on abortion, contraceptives and family planning is, it is their right to hold that position of belief. Where this goes wrong is when they try to legislate their own personal belief and have it enacted on the lives of others when legally such a position or belief has no bearing on the whole because it is a private matter.
The decision of Griswold v. Connecticut is law.
The decision Roe v. Wade is law.
I understand in some part why conservatives, Republicans, the right, pro-lifers view these decisions as reprehensible but that does not mean that they should not be able to coexist with the laws that are more tolerable. That does not mean these laws should not be supported just because you disagree with them.
Until these laws are changed women have the right to receive an abortion if they want to terminate their pregnancy. Women have the right to buy their own forms of contraception: the pill, the morning after pill, Nuva Ring, Depo, Mirena etc. Women have the right to do what is necessary for their sexual health and reproductive life course and to anyone; man or woman who says differently disagree but don’t try to create laws out of belligerence that may lead to an increase in illegal abortions and a rise in birthrates among women, teens etc. who have no business having babies or who simply can’t afford to but no longer have any other options.
A lifetime of being ready and willing to just be barefoot and pregnant is not a life. It is the roadmap toward becoming a fetus factory where the fetus is more important than the factory it’s grown in. How’s that for preserving a family the life of an unborn child is so sacred that the mother, the one who is to give birth, give life to this child, is now nothing more than a customary roadblock between the world and the real prize.
Ladies this is the GOP way: your rights are trampled in favor of a life not yet lived by a person not yet known who cannot begin to speak to defend its rights that it does not inherently have.
What do you think of the candidate’s positions on abortion & contraception?
Staff Writer; Nikesha Leeper
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