One person told me something, so it must be true at all times in all cases.
I don’t have the book, but I did a search on some reviews. Apparantly the Santorums just wrapped the baby up and walked out of the hospital.
Leaving aside his high position, I don’t think there’s a prosecutor in the country that would want to touch that case.
I’m not defending this, but I’d like to point out that I don’t disbelieve it either. It’s too strange a story to get the Santorums much political benefit, especially given the “ick” factor.
So you think hospitals routinely let parents take their dead children home?
I don’t believe the Santorums gave them the chance to deny permission. Nothing routine about that.
MPSIMS?
I agree with treis and WhyNot.
Don’t
believe
the
Santorums
GAVE
them
permission?
:eek:
So, the Santorums dictate terms when their almighty righteous selves go in the hospital? And the rest of us have to abide by… the law? :dubious:
No… they didn’t give them a chance to deny permission. In other words, they didn’t dictate terms, they snuck out the back door while nobody was looking.
Oh, and, count me in for ghoulish. Seriously, disturbingly ghoulish. Everybody deals with grief differently, but when you go Norman Bates on the situation, I think you’ve crossed the line.
A Google of the term “postmortem photography” turns up 21,000 hits. It is a not unheard-of practice.
Nor is placenta-eating.
Neither is something I would feel inclined to do, myself.
That the Santorums chose to indulge themselves in a somewhat extreme act of memento mori is not something to be condemned out of hand. That they evidently circumvented hospital policies and procedures to do so is not particularly laudable.
There are a great many iniquities that may be legitimately laid at Senator Fecalfoam’s door. This one is of minor importance, in the grand scheme of things.
IMHO, YMMV, yadda-yadda.
A Google (or Altavista…) search on… WATERSPORTS might turn up 21 million hits, ALL just as disgusting as what you just mentioned. Does that make it right? Acceptable?
Again my point is… I think that the practice of taking a dead baby home, and sleeping with it, is disgusting and wrong and reprehensible and something that is NOT what I want lawmakers from my state engaging in. And if they DIDN’T do that … just let the press and all us THINK they did that, that is even worse! That is so shallow and pandering that I have even LESS respect for Santorum than I previously did (he IS a damn senator ferchrissakes.)
Either way… he and his wife controverted the law and did something that is not just illegal, but abominable… Or they conspired to let the media think they did this, to further their political agendas. In either case, at the expense of their dead baby’s dignity…
I have little doubt that he’s used this story to further his image as a modern day Judas. Oh… I mean Jesus.
Okay, I mean Judas.
Excuse me? You’re entitled to your preference (including “ick”) but unless you’re being pissed on against your will who are you to call something “unacceptable”? Insn’t that what Sen. Analfroth is so often guilty of?
I would also point out that (unlike water sports), postmortum photography, particularly of children, was at one time a common pratices. As was having the dead body in the home for some time. Our current way of death is not the way it’s always been. I can understand finding it disturbing but I can’t imagine what’s wrong and detestable about it.
Look, even if post mortum photography is common and acceptible, what part of Intentionaly Sleeping With The Corpse of your Dead and Decomposing Child acceptable or common?
Who defends this? Yeesh. Do you suppose they’d do the same thing with Gramma when she passes? And if so, would people say, “Don’t question them in their time of grief.”?
There is grief, and there is ooky. We are well into OokyLand here.
Pardon me, but while I find Rick Santorum a sanctimonious prick who routinely ignores his duties towards large sections of his own constituency in favor of his religious and business-oriented personal prejudices, I think that treis and Mr Moto have brought up some excellent points here. I cannot imagine the pain that someone who loses a newborn child must go through, and I don’t believe anybody has the right to judge anybody else based on their own “ick factor.” (You might recall some arguments about homosexuality that invoked the ick factor argument; what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the Senator.)
Alright, I’m really losing it here now.
JESUS F-ING CHRIST, PEOPLE. DO YOU SERIOUSLY THINK THEY GOT ANY SLEEP THAT NIGHT?
Really, think about it. They held their baby as it died. (very, very common in NICU), Their other small children were not allowed in the hospital to do the same (no one under 12 admitted.). But the other children were curious and invested in the pregnancy. Karen, who had worked in a NICU (thanks, Mr. Moto, for that info), knew they wouldn’t be “allowed” to take their child home to morn its death, so they quietly wrapped it up in a blanket and walked out.
Ever hear of a wake, people? They didn’t (and worldwide, still don’t) always embalm them. Mothers and aunts all over the world clean the body with water, with their own hands. Touch the dead body. Kiss those lips one more time. Cry and rinse and convincing themselves that yes, this person is actually dead and was never coming back. Children come in to hold the hand, offer a kiss, and stoke the forehead of their loved one. Fathers hold their dead children, weeping and holding and kissing and loving.
Just because we’re raised our fear of death to include even touching a dead body (unless you’re properly licensed, of course) doesn’t make any of this “unnatural” or “disgusting.” It makes it very, very human.
Who defends this? People who have actually lost children, or have come very, very close. People who are pissed at hospitals for turning death into a mystery. People who understand that your way of doing things is not the only way. I hate Santorum as much as the next person with a brain, but only for the things he does that affect other people. Why the hell would you even care about this? Get a fucking life and leave people to mourn in their own way.
I dunno. I’m generally in favor of getting personal with those politicians who play games with the personal lives of others to score their own political points. So Newt Gingrich’s deathbed divorce, Bush’s DUI, and Tom Delay’s micropenis (you did hear about that, didn’t you?) are all fair game.
On the other hand, from a machivellian perspesctive, treis has a point. If we’re gonna get personal with Santorum, this particular is more likely to backfire than actually turn anyone against him.
Stick to fecal foam.
Sorry, guys, you’re over the line, here.* Barring a citation that there was a law being broken (rather than a hospital policy) or that they hung onto the child’s body beyond a single night of grief, you are both trying to impose what you want to believe on the events for no better reason, that I can see, than that you loathe the person involved.
One of the practices that changed for the better in recent years was permitting families to grieve over still-born infants. Throughout most of the 20th century, such children were whisked away from the mother who was never allowed to say goodbye (and the father even less so), a situation that inflicted a lot of distress (and often harm) on the families. That practice has been reversed and parents are now encouraged to hold their child’s body and grieve. If doing so overnight seems to bother you, note that we do not have the times of the birth or the point at which the child was taken to the mortician. Claims of a “decomposing” body is excessive exaggeration. Many people who die in their sleep are lying next to their spouses, who often do not wake up to find them until morning and the survivors are never cautioned that they have been at risk.
Calm down. Go hate Santorum for what he does in the Senate, not for failing to match your comfortable stereotypes of what sterile North American society “should” do.
- Speaking as a poster discussing acceptable social behavior, not as a Mod.
I’m with Whynot and treis.
And embalming them and putting the corpse in a $10000 casket in their best clothes with their hair done up nice for people to not touch, but just look at the waxy figure of the deceased is normal?
While I call shenanigans to this Santorum story ( and think that if they did actually leave the hospital with the baby authorized or not) no one has a right to tell another person how to grieve. I think they humanized the entire situation in a more appropriate matter than a hands-off approach that society has.
If this story is true, personally, I think what they did is not that awful of a thing. How different would it be if they had had a stillborn/miscarrage at home and waited to let the ambulance take the mom to the hospital for a few hours while they came to terms and cuddled with that dead child?
If they did sneak out, there isn’t a judge in the world that would press charges with them, not because they are Politico’s, but it is would be causing more pain and misery upon something so very sad. What would be the point, really?
Also, you can have a wake at your home. We have been conditioned by society that you go to a Funeral Home and have everything take place within 3 days after death, which this part is so wrong on so many levels it makes me mad.
There is a book out there by Lisa Carlson called Caring for your Dead.
Depending on state and local laws, you can pull permits and even drive the corpse from the hospital to the funeral home/your house. Did you know that to dress the deceased it is $200+. I don’t know about you, but outside of the ick factor because we have been so desensitizes or over-sensitized about death because it is all a MYSTERY…No.It’s.Note. Death.Happens and it is rarely pretty.
I’d be really pissed about my family paying $200 to display me. When one of my brothers died, and I saw this, I asked if they only had the casket open half way, could they just dress him down to his waist would it be $100. Burying him for eternity in his boxers would have been perfect. What man wouldn’t want to be in his BVD’s forever?
Even given local laws, have a burial on your own property. (This would not apply to city and suburban folks, but country folks.) Fascinating book.
When I had my cat put to sleep, I brought him home and held him on my lap for the remainder of the day. I can imagine I’d want to do the same if it were my child. Whether the guy actually did it, I can’t say, though it does sound…unlikely.
Shirley, I liked that book too.
I’m not going to pretend that there’s anything that makes Santorum a decent or worthwhile human being. But I can’t understand why people want to leap on this as a symbol of - of what exactly? I don’t think it even seems that strange - it seems like a natural way to bid goodbye to your dead child, to me. I think it’s sad even when someone like Santorum is subject to this sort of tragedy.
Consentual, if unusual, sex acts involving adults are unacceptable? Things that are icky are morally wrong? I’m afraid I don’t follow here. What’s your problem with other folks having the sex lives they want? And why do you think a sexual act is a valid comparison to a way of saying goodbye to a child?
Your viewpoint seems like an interesting one in comparison with Santorum’s - he also uses invalid comparisons and the ick factor to decide which sex acts are okay and which ones aren’t.
I could not despise Rick Santorum any more than I do.
I feel he is, at absolute best, a waste of perfectly good air.
But I find absolutely nothing disgusting or wrong with what he did. At all.
I can only hope I would have the strength to do what the Santorum’s did in their shoes.