# Santorum's wife had an abortion?!?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438
**Category:** Politics & Elections
**Created:** [January 4, 2012, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438 "2012-01-04T23:20:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@rocking\_chair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rocking_chair)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/41 "2012-01-05T13:45:19Z")
> [@WhyNot](#):
>
> I don’t believe anyone with a lick of medical knowledge would say that, no. That’s not how antibiotics work. Antibiotics don’t “help a body reject/fight off” an infected fetus, they damage and/or kill bacteria. Her uterus was contracting because of the irritation and inflammation which accompanies infection. It didn’t begin contracting because of antibiotics or anything else her doctors gave her. Antibiotics are not uterine stimulants. They can cause birth defects, like stained teeth or deformed bones, but they do not cause miscarriage or fetal death past the first week of pregnancy (and their toxicity then is simply unknown).
>
> Nothing to see here, folks. I’m as pro-choice as they come (seriously…I’m not even sure I’m opposed to infanticide in the first few months), and this doesn’t come close to being an abortion, if what’s in the liked article is accurate.
>
> I can hate Santorum plenty without this. Calling this an abortion is stooping as low as the protesters outside abortion clinics yelling lies and carrying around mislabeled pictures of “aborted babies”.
>
> ETA: In the interest of bringing some facts into this “debate”: [Antibiotics and Pregnancy / Use of Antibiotics during Pregnancy](http://antibioticsandpregnancy.pbworks.com/w/page/13306663/Use%20of%20Antibiotics%20during%20Pregnancy)
why not, i didn’t think anyone with a bit of medical knowledge would think that. there are some on the very fringe of the prolife movement that aren’t very into facts and medical knowledge.
guinastasia, this was the pregnancy that resulted in gabriel michael who lived for 2 hours.
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### Author:  [@Wallenstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallenstein)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/42 "2012-01-05T14:01:48Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#):
>
> Just to be clear, it isn’t the grieving or the photographs that I find shocking—more the idea of taking a dead fetus home in a blanket, showing it to small children, and “spending hours kissing and cuddling” it that’s hard for me to comprehend. My mother miscarried when I was young and I’d have been seriously traumatized if my parents did something like that. But you’re right, I don’t understand and don’t claim to.
I think this is quite common in some cultures.
\*\*TokyoPlayer \*\*posted about [his family’s experience](http://boardstest.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=389289) of taking their deceased child home after he passed away straight after birth - the circumstances were not directly the same, in that the child was born at a much later stage, but the principle is similar.
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### Author:  [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/43 "2012-01-05T14:42:31Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#):
>
> That wasn’t an abortion.
That’s Santorum’s defense, which raises the question of whether Bill Clinton taught him the fine art of definitional quibbling, or whether he taught Bill.
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### Author:  [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/44 "2012-01-05T14:48:10Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#):
>
> I stand corrected there, although it is partial-birth abortions he’s talking about which means he’s _technically_ not contradictory.
Well, the ability to be that finely technical leans me toward the “he taught Bill” answer to my question.
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### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/45 "2012-01-05T15:09:07Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#):
>
> Huh? It seems to me to be equivalent to an abortion to save the life of the mother.
They didn’t intentionally induce labor or otherwise terminate the pregnancy. That’s kind of the end of the story for me, and I think **WhyNot** ’s post really puts this to bed.
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### Author:  [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/46 "2012-01-05T16:41:44Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#):
>
> I do think he’s a weasel, and if he would deny such a procedure to other women
There was no “procedure”. There was no D&C. There was no vacuum extraction. There was no medication given to hasten uterine contractions or to expel the contents of the uterus. (Again, assuming the linked article is accurate.)
There was a surgery to try to correct a congenital defect while the fetus was still in the uterus. Then the surgical site on the fetus got infected, and the infection spread to the mother (or maybe the surgical site on the mother got infected and the infection spread to the fetus, it’s unclear and a difference without distinction). The infection caused uterine contractions. The hospital gave the mother antibiotics to stop the infection.
Now COULD they have given her something to stop the contractions or sewed up the cervix and kept the infected fetus inside her? Possibly, technically, but it wouldn’t have done any good. Had they done that, the infection would probably have killed them both in 24-48 hours. And I don’t mean “probably” like, 50/50…I mean “probably” like “absent a miracle from The Flying Spaghetti Monster…”
All they did was give her antibiotics for her infection and allow nature to take its course and expel the fetus naturally.
Hell, they even DECLINED drugs (pitocin, no doubt) to hasten the labor and get the whole ugly ordeal over with sooner.
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#):
>
> Taking antibiotics was equivalent to aborting the fetus …
Please explain this part to me, 'cause I’m just not getting it. How was taking antibiotics equivalent to aborting the fetus? Remember, antibiotics don’t cause miscarriages or fetal death in a 19 week fetus.
> [@rocking\_chair](#):
>
> why not, i didn’t think anyone with a bit of medical knowledge would think that. there are some on the very fringe of the prolife movement that aren’t very into facts and medical knowledge.
I wish I could agree, but there are lot of very intelligent pro-choice people posting to this thread who seem to think this was an abortion somehow.
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### Author:  [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/47 "2012-01-05T17:38:56Z")
> [@WhyNot](#):
>
> I wish I could agree, but there are lot of very intelligent pro-choice people posting to this thread who seem to think this was an abortion somehow.
Yeah, there was no abortion here, that I can see.
My problem with it isn’t that there was an abortion, because there wasn’t. But they would have had one. They say so. These are people who hide behind the RCC and would deny other women a procedure they felt was within their rights to choose.
The RCC says no, you don’t get to have an abortion to save the woman’s life, and abortion includes hastening delivery of an unviable fetus. The RCC does not allow you to choose between the woman and the fetus. You have to just sort of leave it to God and if God decides both die, well, you both die.
What the Santorums said wasn’t that. They said it would be an easy choice to choose the mother (and so it should be for anyone who isn’t a slack-jawed imbecile) if there had to be a choice made. But by saying that, they are rejecting the RCC position AND the position of the anti-abortion nutters they have signed up with. Which is why I would have hoped they would say, “Oh, so this is what it’s like to be facing a real choice between abortion and the death of the mother and yes, we would choose to save the mother. Gee, let’s back down from some of our unfair and disgusting rhetoric about this sort of situation.”
But they doubled down instead. That’s what’s disgusting. They had an option and they would have taken it despite their God, but they would deny me that option for their God. In fact, they would force me to be a better Catholic than they are.
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### Author:  [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/48 "2012-01-05T18:31:32Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#):
>
> Yeah, there was no abortion here, that I can see.
>
> My problem with it isn’t that there was an abortion, because there wasn’t. But they would have had one. They say so. These are people who hide behind the RCC and would deny other women a procedure they felt was within their rights to choose.
>
> **The RCC says no, you don’t get to have an abortion to save the woman’s life, and abortion includes hastening delivery of an unviable fetus. The RCC does not allow you to choose between the woman and the fetus. You have to just sort of leave it to God and if God decides both die, well, you both die.**
>
> What the Santorums said wasn’t that. They said it would be an easy choice to choose the mother (and so it should be for anyone who isn’t a slack-jawed imbecile) if there had to be a choice made. But by saying that, they are rejecting the RCC position AND the position of the anti-abortion nutters they have signed up with. Which is why I would have hoped they would say, “Oh, so this is what it’s like to be facing a real choice between abortion and the death of the mother and yes, we would choose to save the mother. Gee, let’s back down from some of our unfair and disgusting rhetoric about this sort of situation.”
>
> But they doubled down instead. That’s what’s disgusting. They had an option and they would have taken it despite their God, but they would deny me that option for their God. In fact, they would force me to be a better Catholic than they are.
The bolded area does not agree with what I was taught as a Catholic. It was 30-some years ago, but I was taught that a “certainly unviable” fetus could be removed by any means. It’s the case where the child is saveable, but at the almost certain cost of the Mother’s life that no choice can be made.
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### Author:  [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/49 "2012-01-05T18:35:48Z")
> [@TruCelt](#):
>
> The bolded area does not agree with what I was taught as a Catholic. It was 30-some years ago, but I was taught that a “certainly unviable” fetus could be removed by any means. It’s the case where the child is saveable, but at the almost certain cost of the Mother’s life that no choice can be made.
I do not believe you were taught correctly. Direct abortion, even of an ectopic pregnancy, is forbidden by the RCC. I’ll lift from Wikipedia since it echoes what I’ve read elsewhere:
> [@](#):
>
> In 1895 the Holy See excluded the inducing of non-viable premature birth and in 1889 established the principle that any direct killing of either fetus or mother is wrong; in 1902 it ruled out the direct removal of an ectopic embryo to save the mother’s life, but did not forbid the removal of the infected fallopian tube, thus causing an indirect abortion.(see below).[32]
>
> In 1930 Pope Pius XI ruled out what he called “the direct murder of the innocent” as a means of saving the mother. And the Second Vatican Council declared: “Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.”
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### Author:  [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/50 "2012-01-05T18:44:55Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#):
>
> Tell that to those seeking to outlaw it, as they typically call the procedure performed a “partial birth abortion.”
I don’t see how this was partial birth abortion. It sounds like a premature delivery before viability.
> [@jsgoddess](#):
>
> Given that the RCC doesn’t allow straight-up abortion…I’m pretty sure it’s a no-no even to save the woman’s life. And that includes, as far as I understand it, inducing labor.
I thought they were OK with medically necessary treatments that would result in the death of a fetus. So if you had cancer and the chemo would kill the fetus but you culdn’t survive without chemo for 9 months, then you could have the chemo…
> [@WhyNot](#):
>
> Practically all is not all. And, as luck would have it, Santorum is one pro-lifer who does NOT support an exception if the mother’s life is threatened.
That sounds like an objection to the HEALTH exception, not the LIFE exception. The problem that many conservatives have had with the boundaries of the health exception, not the concept of the health exception. So in their infinite wisdom, they just outlaw the whole damn thing and rely on jury nullification to protect the truly meritorious cases.
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### Author:  [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/51 "2012-01-05T18:55:09Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#):
>
> I thought they were OK with medically necessary treatments that would result in the death of a fetus. So if you had cancer and the chemo would kill the fetus but you culdn’t survive without chemo for 9 months, then you could have the chemo…
That is not a direct abortion. The goal is not to destroy the embryo or fetus, but to battle the cancer. For example, if staying pregnant increased a woman’s risk of dying, she would be unable to have an abortion to reduce that risk. If, on the other hand, her uterus were cancerous and going to kill her, she may be permitted to have a hysterectomy thereby indirectly causing the death of the embryo or fetus. You can have “diseased” tissue removed, even if it contains the embryo or fetus. So in an ectopic pregnancy, they are not permitted to excise only the embryo or to inject the area to make the embryo dissolve. They are permitted to remove all or a portion of the Fallopian tube that contains the embryo because the RCC calls that portion “diseased.”
In the case of the Santorums, she would not be permitted to have an abortion to save her life from the infection, nor would she be permitted to induce labor. These are direct abortions, and they are what the Santorums said they would choose to do.
However, if the antibiotic had the foreseen but unintended side effect of causing an abortion, that would/might still be allowed.
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### Author:  [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/52 "2012-01-05T19:18:13Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#):
>
> The problem that many conservatives have had with the boundaries of the health exception, not the concept of the health exception. So in their infinite wisdom, they just outlaw the whole damn thing and rely on jury nullification to protect the truly meritorious cases.
Real-World Translation: …they would just outlaw the whole damn thing and rely on prosecutors focusing their entire attention on cases arising amongst the Wrong Sort Of People[tm].
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### Author:  [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/53 "2012-01-05T19:42:26Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#):
>
> That’s Santorum’s defense, which raises the question of whether Bill Clinton taught him the fine art of definitional quibbling, or whether he taught Bill.
Neither, you’re just letting your personal opinions of Santorum blind you to the facts.
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### Author:  [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/54 "2012-01-05T22:36:42Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#):
>
> What the Santorums said wasn’t that. They said it would be an easy choice to choose the mother (and so it should be for anyone who isn’t a slack-jawed imbecile) if there had to be a choice made.
Did they? I missed that part, or you got it from a different article. What I read is:
> [@](#):
>
> Karen, a soft-spoken red-haired 37-year-old, said that “ultimately” she would have agreed to intervention for the sake of her other children.
>
> “If the physician came to me and said if we don’t deliver your baby in one hour you will be dead, yeah, I would have to do it,” she said. “But for me, it was at the very end. I would never make a decision like that until all other means had been thoroughly exhausted.”
That’s Karen, not Rick, not “the Santorums”. That’s \*Karen \*(a former NICU nurse, incidentally, so she knew exactly what was going on the whole time, assuming she was lucid) saying what she would have done had things gone the way they didn’t go. And it sure doesn’t sound like she thinks it would be an easy choice, even an hour from (theoretical) death’s door.
Calling Rick Santorum\* a hypocrite (or whatever it that “article” was going for) because of what his \*wife \*didn’t do but might have done…I mean, that’s pretty low and dishonest. Again, it reminds me of “pro-life”, anti-choice tactics, not pro-choice tactics.
I mean, unless we’re going way old school Catholicism and he’s a bad Catholic for letting his wife have a mind of her own…
\*And again, let me reiterate: I loathe Rick Santorum, as a candidate and as a human being. I feel like I need to take a shower after defending him. Ick.
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### Author:  [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/55 "2012-01-05T22:47:22Z")
> [@WhyNot](#):
>
> Did they? I missed that part, or you got it from a different article. What I read is:
She said she would have chosen herself, and he said it wouldn’t be a difficult choice to save her if both were in danger. That’s where the hypocrisy lies. He said:
> [@](#):
>
> Obviously, if it was a choice of whether both Karen and the child are going to die or just the child is going to die, I mean it’s a pretty easy call.
It is an easy call. It is, however, a call he would not allow women to make, and it’s a call the RCC does not allow.
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### Author:  [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/56 "2012-01-05T22:53:15Z")
AH! There it is, thank you. I literally could not find the quote in the article.
OK, yeah, I see where you’re coming from. I still don’t think that this is the smoking gun the article’s writer does. Seems a pretty tenuous line from A to B, coming from a “what if” place, but okay. Now at least I understand how posters I respect are interpreting it. 🙂
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### Author:  [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/57 "2012-01-05T22:57:56Z")
> [@WhyNot](#):
>
> AH! There it is, thank you. I literally could not find the quote in the article.
>
> OK, yeah, I see where you’re coming from. I still don’t think that this is the smoking gun the article’s writer does. Seems a pretty tenuous line from A to B, coming from a “what if” place, but okay. Now at least I understand how posters I respect are interpreting it. 🙂
The smoking gun aspect of it, for me, is that these are people who know full well that circumstances can arise that pit the life of a fetus against the life of a woman, and they are saying clearly that they would choose the woman.
And then Rick Santorum argues that it’s all a mirage.
It really does play into the “the only good abortion is my abortion” idea for me. It would be okay if they did it. Not you. Not me. But for them, why, it’s an easy choice.
I just want to shake them and demand to know why they get to make that choice but other people don’t. Why is Mrs. Santorum too good to die that way, but other women don’t matter? Why they could have chosen to do something that would have resulted in immediate and automatic excommunication from the RCC, but it’s other people who are unholy and disgusting.
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### Author:  [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/58 "2012-01-05T23:09:28Z")
I suppose if the OP had been called “Santorum’s wife would have had an abortion if she hadn’t miscarried,” then I’d be right there with ya.
But “Santorum: Our Hypothetical Abortion Would Have Been Different, If It Had Happened” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. 😉
My main purpose here was to refute that what actually happened was an abortion, as both the OP and the linked article claim, and I think that part’s done.
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### Author:  [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2012, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/59 "2012-01-05T23:19:06Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#):
>
> And then Rick Santorum argues that it’s all a mirage.
Unless you’re referring to a different quote, he argued that it was a mirage _when discussing partial birth abortion_.
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### Author:  [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2012, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/santorums-wife-had-an-abortion/608438/60 "2012-01-06T00:06:49Z")
Two points:
1. This was not an abortion.
2. Even if it was, the most extreme anti-abortion members of Congress all support an except to save the life of the mother, including Santorum. The quotes from this thread was an objection to partial birth abortion bills that made exceptions for the life AND HEALTH of the mother. This health exception was disliked by conservatives because in every pregnancy there is some risk of health problems to the mother. It would have been the exception that swallowed the rule.
Rick Santorum has a lot of other baggage. This accusation is unfair.
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