Sympathy for the devil

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I chal­lenge any­one to pro­vide a rep­utable source for this sup­posed quote attrib­uted to GOP pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Rick Santorum:

Abor­tion in any form is wrong, except for my wife. If your wife’s life was at stake and the only thing that could save her was an abor­tion, well, too bad. Your wife will have to die. It was dif­fer­ent with my wife. You see, I love her. I don’t even know your wife’s name. 

I call bull­shit on this whole sto­ry. It’s spread­ing through the Inter­net like wild­fire, no doubt because Rick San­to­rum is wide­ly hat­ed by social proges­sives. A sto­ry like this rein­forces the nar­ra­tive in the minds of those pre­dis­posed to dis­like the for­mer sen­a­tor. It takes the bad guy and shows him to be even worse. And peo­ple repost it with­out think­ing or check­ing its validity.

Repost­ing some­thing like this is seduc­tive. The post you’re read­ing right now start­ed as a con­dem­na­tion of San­to­rum based on the alle­ga­tions in that arti­cle. For­tu­nate­ly, we here at Mono­chro­mat­ic Out­look believe that when wast­ing time read­ing polit­i­cal blogs on the Inter­net one should waste more time con­firm­ing the facts before wast­ing time writ­ing a polit­i­cal blog post.

Kudos to Dan Sav­age (it’s safe to say he’s not a fan of Rick San­to­rum) for retract­ing his post on thestranger.com, cit­ing lack of any cred­i­ble source. Dan, you’re a pro­fes­sion­al and you should have checked before you post­ed, but every­one makes mis­takes. Not every­one cor­rects theirs. Good on ya.

I’d very much like to keep Rick San­to­rum away from pub­lic office, but spread­ing lies — espe­cial­ly one so vicious about a fam­i­ly tragedy — is not to be tolerated.

Published by splicer

7 Replies to “Sympathy for the devil”

  1. Spread­ing of misinformation

    I do agree with you. Yes I was shocked to read that last sen­tenced. How­ev­er, from expe­ri­ence on rush­ing to post article(s) that weren’t cred­i­ble bit me. I have learned to research the pharse before post­ing. I did go to Sav­age’s link from your page to see for myself.

    I did believe that he could­n’t have said that 1) out­loud and 2) say that unsin­cere pharse. So I thought the quotes weren’t cor­rect but hey peo­ple say the darnest things.

  2. What San­to­rum did (and did­n’t) say

    The orig­i­nal source for that quote was an edi­to­r­i­al at Cagle.com.  The edi­to­ri­al­ist was mak­ing the point that San­to­rum’s wife actu­al­ly had an abor­tion, even though San­to­rum says his fam­i­ly is staunch­ly pro-life, and invent­ed the quote as a hypothetical.

    The Cagle It’s since been removed, but Google’s got the cached version.

    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:blog.cagle.com/2011/06/rick-santorum-when-the-anti-choice-choose/&hl=en&client=firefox‑a&hs=vwz&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&strip=1

    Here’s the key excerpt.

    - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - -

    Abor­tion in any form is wrong,” said San­to­rum in 2000, three years after the tragedy. He should have added, “Except for my wife. If your wife’s life was at stake…

    - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - -

     

    1. What San­to­rum did (and did­n’t) do

      Thanks for chim­ing in, Lou. I have a prob­lem with the edi­to­ri­al­ist invent­ing the quote as hypo­thet­i­cal with­out an indi­ca­tion that it was hypo­thet­i­cal. But beyond that, it’s not an estab­lished fact that the San­to­rum’s wife ever had an abor­tion. The only ref­er­ence I can find to it (oth­er than reposts of this same arti­cle) is the New York­er arti­cle, which states that they decid­ed against hav­ing an abor­tion but lat­er miscarried.

      The only pos­si­ble good that some­thing like this can do is illus­trate how easy it is to accuse a woman who mis­car­ried of hav­ing abort­ed, and how dis­taste­ful and wrong it would be to make her prove that it real­ly was a mis­car­riage, and that by exten­sion since this blog post was a hor­ri­ble fic­tion that we should pre­vent the  gov­ern­ment from per­pe­trat­ing a sim­i­lar hor­ri­ble fic­tion. But you would­n’t kill some­one to protest the death penal­ty, would you? So why slan­der to protest the poten­tial for future false accusations?

      With­out some source with first­hand knowl­edge claim­ing that the mis­car­riage was induced, this sto­ry shows noth­ing. If such a source comes for­ward I’ll be the first to call San­to­rum a hyp­ocrite. I’ll even go out on a limb and say he’s prob­a­bly a hyp­ocrite. But my opin­ion means did­dly-squat unless I can back it up.

  3. Kindt is blameless

    I have a prob­lem with the edi­to­ri­al­ist invent­ing the quote as hypo­thet­i­cal with­out an indi­ca­tion that it was hypothetical.

    Er, maybe you’re mis­un­der­stand­ing the way that I quot­ed the edi­to­r­i­al.  Every­thing between the two lines below comes from the editorial.

    __________________________________________________

     

    Abor­tion in any form is wrong,” said San­to­rum in 2000, three years after the tragedy. He should have added, “Except for my wife. If your wife’s life was at stake…

    __________________________________________________

    When the edi­to­r­i­al writer says “He should have added,” he’s clear­ly say­ing that San­to­rum did not [but should have] said those words…

    I agree that peo­ple should­n’t lie to fur­ther their polit­i­cal caus­es. In this case I think the peo­ple who screwed up were the peo­ple who used that quote (and not the edi­to­ri­al­ist who wrote it). Some­one using that quote may have inten­tion­al­ly tried to know­ing­ly pass off that made-up quote as a real quote. I imag­ine there are oth­ers who then re-quot­ed it in good faith, and who would not have done so if they’d gen­uine­ly known it was­n’t a real quote.

  5. Despi­ca­ble!

    If there was even a hint of truth to this sto­ry you could find it every­where, includ­ing Wikipedia and the main­stream media. The media is no friend of Santorum.

    The blog­ger that cre­at­ed this sto­ry did a far bet­ter job of cre­at­ing this fic­tion than most fic­tion writ­ers can do. That he worked so hard to make a plau­si­ble sound­ing lie is not to his cred­it. That he passed it off as true is despicable.

    Dad

    1. The hint of a flim­sy foundation

      I hate hav­ing to defend this guy. If the media is no friend to Rick San­to­rum, the media has the right idea for once. I’d real­ly like to help him find a nice job in the pri­vate sec­tor and keep him out of government.

      The sto­ry claims he’s a hyp­ocrite because his wife had an abor­tion. His wife was giv­en med­ica­tion for an infec­tion that would oth­er­wise have killed her. It was known that there was a chance that the med­ica­tion would induce labor and ter­mi­nate the preg­nan­cy. It’s per­haps a minor dis­tinc­tion because the com­plex­i­ty of med­ical sit­u­a­tions makes it dif­fi­cult to make accu­rate one-line char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of diag­noses and treat­ments, but I’ll make the dis­tinc­tion any­way: a life-sav­ing treat­ment that ends the preg­nan­cy is not the same as an abor­tion to save the moth­er’s life.

      One would hope that this trag­ic expe­ri­ence would pro­vide a some­what nuanced posi­tion for Mr San­to­rum, and that he of all peo­ple should be aware that doc­tors should not be pun­ished for mak­ing the best choic­es avail­able to them.

      In fact, a quick review of San­to­rum’s vot­ing record on the issue reveals that every anti-abor­tion bill he has vot­ed for includ­ed excep­tions for pro­ce­dures which are med­ical­ly nec­es­sary to pre­serve the life of the moth­er. There is no incon­sis­ten­cy between his posi­tion and the choic­es made by the San­to­rums and their doctors.

      Inter­est­ing­ly, the antiabor­tion bills that San­to­rum vot­ed for claim stand­ing based on the inter­state com­merce clause of the US Con­sti­tu­tion. That does­n’t sound like the strict con­struc­tion­ist that San­to­rum claims to be. So there’s your incon­sis­ten­cy, for what­ev­er it’s worth.

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