Santorum on Rape and Abortion: you Might be Surprised About What I Have to Say About the Presidential Candidate's Most Recent Gum Flapping

I know you'd expect me to write a blog entry that rakes Santorum across the coals for his recent disclosure that he wanted to constitutionalize the personhood of a fetus and take away a woman's right to choose.  To be honest with you, I cannot decide who I am more irritated at: Santorum for his viewpoints or the liberal media for the disrespectful way they are reporting on his viewpoints.

I cannot let the way many liberal media outlets have treated this issue go without comment on my blog simply because I tend to have very liberal viewpoints myself.  I am tired of the thoughtless rhetoric coming from all sides in this Presidential campaign.  Of course, not all political statements, conservative or liberal, are "rhetoric" where information is simply regurgitated but not supported by thoughtfulness, compassion, or sound information but rather stereotype, bias, and emotion.  Consequentially, I have absolutely no appreciation for liberal rhetoric where someone boasts very liberal viewpoints but fails to have investigated, questioned, and made consistent their own ideology and thus becomes ignorant to various groups as a result. Abortion is one issue where I will especially take both liberals and conservative as well a pro-choice and pro-life statements to task for their ignorance toward women and other commonly associated groups, adoptees, original mothers, and victims of rape.  In an effort to trash Santorum, various media outlets have thrown women, victims of rape, and individuals conceived from rape absolutely under the bus to do so.  This is horrendously shameful and I am completely appalled by it.

To understand why I am angry, you must understand what the question "you don't support abortion even in the case of rape and incest?!" implies.  Abortion debates typically go the same way.  Someone asks someone else for their views on abortion to which the other person, if pro-life, replies with their view that abortion is wrong.  Then the pro-life person is typically asked to clarify if they mean it is wrong under all circumstances or just some.  Then the pro-life person responds "yes, I believe that the fetus has personhood and that it is wrong to abort it."  Here's where the next line enters "even in the case of rape or incest!?"  If the person who is pro-life responds "yes, even in the case of rape and incest, abortion is wrong" they've just condemned a woman who is pregnant against her will  to carry her "rapist's baby."  There may be a good deal of pearl clutching and gasping in astonishment at their opinion.  However, I dislike both opinions and especially what the "rape and incest" viewpoint implies.  There are three general problems or implications here, especially evidenced in the media, when this topic comes up.

What's wrong with asking "you think it's wrong, even if a woman was raped?!"

• It implies that there are some circumstances under which it is perfectly OK to allow, as well as disallow, a woman to have autonomy and choice over her own body, depending on definable sets of circumstances that are pre-determined by people other than the woman herself.
• It frames child birth as a punishment to be doled out by whomever deems themselves fit.  Saying that a woman should not be forced to carry a pregnancy because she did not conceive through consensual sex implies then that those with pregnancies that did result from consensual sex can or should be punished.  This viewpoint is disrespectful to all women.
• It asserts that individuals born of rape or that women who have conceived from rape who choose to carry to term and give birth have something to be ashamed of.

So here is where I will give Mr. Santorum some credit; he's consistent.  He believes that fetuses are people and that they should fall under the protections enjoyed by any other human being in the United States (I'll refrain from commenting in detail on the irony of the lack of consistency of applying equal personhood to already-born people in multiple diverse groups, such as the LGBTQ community).  To him, because a fetus is a person, he feels no circumstance (such as rape) erases that personhood (I know, the irony, the irony!) or that "person's" right to live.  There is no flip-flopping for him where he falls into the category of "well, the fetus has rights but not if the mother was raped."  Thinks about it: when someone says "a fetus is a person and should not be aborted....oh, except in the case of rape or incest," someone may be attempting to sit on the fence, please both sides, and avoid that gasping-in-disgust-pearl-clutching response from others.  But what they also just did by saying so is state that already born people, who actually really are people, are not "really people" if they were conceived from rape or incest.

I was conceived from rape.  I assure you that I am indeed a person.

This is the issue with the media outlets.  They are having an absolute field day with his statements by making ignorant and offensive statements and implications (such as the three I pointed out) of their own.  The Daily Mail is one such offender.  The title of their article on this topic states "Rick Santorum says rape victims should 'make the best of a bad situation' if they get pregnant and give birth to the 'gift from God."  This article headline is not saying "Santorum is wrong because he disagrees with a woman's right to choose."    This statement, clarifying directly that they are referring to someone after they were born, mockingly calls that person conceived from rape a "gift from God."  If you want to say that women should have say over their own bodies in all circumstances, fine, I agree with you.  Mocking real, born, people who were conceived from rape is offensive and unacceptable.  


I made three comments on the above referenced article.  One in response to an existing conversation in the comments section on Ryan Bomberger and two letting the Daily Mail know (quite politely, actually) that as someone who was conceived from rape, I found the title of the article offensive and belittling.  In an effort to assert their own rhetoric above the dignity of real people, they chose to censor out the viewpoint of a person their words insulted, and declined to post those two comments.  The third comment I made, which did not include any critique of their method of reporting this issue and did not include any of my perspective as a person conceived from rape, was the only comment of mine that made it through their moderation.  What a shameful abandonment of true liberal values.


CNN was honestly no better.  My first issue, of course, is that Piers Morgan asked the "even in rape or incest?" question to begin with.  That was a huge eye-roller for me.  However, what is more-so offensive is the caption that CNN has under this video that says "Rick Santorum says that even a child conceived through rape is a 'gift' and that life must be protected."  Here we have the same problem again.  CNN does not refer to a woman's right to autonomy over her body.  They directly say the word "child" and mockingly call that child who was conceived from rape a "gift."  They do not say "a woman has the right to choose to end her pregnancy" instead they paint a child who was born as some shameful, horrible thing that no person would ever want.  Rape is horrible and pregnancy from rape is not "God's will" nor a "gift from God."  But CNN did not say "pregnancy."  They said "child."  They mockingly implied that some children are worthless beings outside of the realm of God's love and acceptance based on their conception circumstances.


What Santorum did was say that the fetus, whom he believes is a person, is a gift from God.  What CNN did was mockingly state that actual children who are the products of rape are not gifts from God.  Quite honestly, which statement is really more deplorable?   I believe God loves me but I do not believe he orchestrated my mother's rape just to bring me into this world.  I do not believe he causes bad things to happen to people.  As a person I am blessed by God but I do not for a minute believe my mother's trauma was God's doing.  CNN could have went in this direction but they didn't.  They were too busy victim-blaming and painting victims and children as monsters.


On a side note, in case you are wondering, I will explain who Ryan Bomberger is and why he was mentioned by commenters in at least one article.  He is an adult adoptee who was conceived from rape who says he "should have been aborted" because of the conception circumstances that he has been made aware of via his agency narrative.  It is unfortunate that Mr. Bomberger allows himself and his mother to be stereotyped in this way. I am unsure if he advertises himself as "should have been aborted" because he really believes so or because his catchy campaign benefits not only his political projects (he is behind the billboards featuring faces of Black children, labeling them as an "endangered species" as well as behind Mississippi's recent "personhood" initiative).  Or perhaps, it is to benefit the enormous adoption agency he is the marketing director of; I'm simply not sure. Seeing as Mr. Bomberger does not desire to reunite and speak with his first mother, we will never really know what her thought process was or if she ever did consider abortion (nor is it any of our, or his, business what her thought process was).


The mistake that many liberals and pro-choicers alike fall into is defending access to abortion services based on the argument "what if she just doesn't want a baby right now?"  A subsequent mistake is to then describe horrible circumstances one might envision not wanting to parent under, such as rape, incest, or having a child with a serious illness or disability, as reasons why a woman might not "want a child" and might want to have an abortion.  They fail to recognize that not only does this line of thinking fall into multiple realms of prejudices (e.g. disablism, classism) but it fails to acknowledge and uphold what choice is about.


Choice, in my mind, is simple.  The right to choose describes a basic human right known as "autonomy" or "consent."  Women, as fully human, autonomous, equal human beings, should have control and say at all times over their own bodies.  A fetus cannot thrive without her body nor can its growth be supported without her welfare.  A fetus and a woman cannot have personhood at the same time because when it comes right down to it, for a fetus to be a person a woman must be rendered nothing more than a biological vessel that serves to support its welfare and has rights secondary to the needs of the fetus.  Care cannot be administered to a fetus without first someone touching a woman's body.  To say that a woman cannot have control over her own body at all times, even if pregnant, is to say that women are not autonomous and have no right to give or revoke consent to be touched by others.  It means others get to make decisions for her body in order to sustain the welfare of her pregnancy, such as forcing a woman to go on bed rest or denying a woman's right to refuse medical care while pregnant.  A woman's right to choose means she has a right, not only to be in control of decisions regarding her own body at all times, but also in control of decisions regarding her body that may impact the welfare of her pregnancy; abortion included.  I am not pro-choice because I believe abortion is a wonderful thing or a preferable or easy choice.  I am pro-choice because I believe women are people and because the value of obtaining consent when it comes to touching a woman's body is extremely important to me.


This is precisely what these media outlets need to be pointing out but they aren't.  Instead, they choose what is only a different form of anti-woman, anti-choice rhetoric conveniently disguised as liberal values.  I have no more respect for what they are doing and how they are treating women like my mother and I, than I do for Santorum's anti-choice, anti-autonomy, anti-woman claptrap.