What Would Rick Santorum Do?

Cuzco, Peru - photo by JoAnn Sturman

Scott Sturman
fliesinyoureyes.com

At a time when Republicans should reclaim the Presidency and establish sizable majorities in the House and Senate, the religious right wing of the party has shifted the argument from the winnable topics of fiscal prudence, national defense, and smaller government to the “can of worms” of reproductive rights. Rick Santorum, a man of 18th century credentials, reminisces of the days of no birth control, intelligent design, and house bound women. He lambasts Iran’s Ahmadinejad as an Islamic theocrat, but the former senator sounds more like the Pope than a presidential candidate. If nominated as the Republican candidate this summer, conservatives will once again be treated to another eloquent concession speech in November.

Whenever Mrs. Santorum appears on the television, looking upon her husband dutifully and hinging on his every word, she looks very tired. Having as many children as possible may work for the Santorum’s, but for over a half century the rest of America has not lived on the farm in the pre vaccination era when too many children died of infectious diseases, and those who survived were needed to plow the fields. There is nothing like a fact finding trip to India, China, or Bangladesh to witness first hand the result of unchecked fertility rates. The visitor, overwhelmed by the sure density of people, can flee with a ticket home on the nearest airliner. Yet once a country achieves this level of population burden it is impossible to escape, for baring horrific upheavals the situation cannot be reversed. How pleasant can it be to forever teeter on the knife’s edge where famine is only one subpar growing season away?

I wonder how President Santorum would deal with a real life a situation which regrettably occurs far too often. A pregnant woman in her late twenties presented for a non obstetric surgical emergency. Mr. Santorum would be pleased she did not believe in birth control pills but perhaps not so happy this was her thirteenth pregnancy by multiple suitors all outside wedlock. She had seven living children, the youngest only two months old. Five of these children were in foster care, and there were five abortions along the way. As anesthesia commenced, she fell asleep expressing concern for her children, but the testimonial was not that convincing. She was, of course, paid for her trouble by the taxpayers with no requirement to aspire to even a semblance of responsible parenthood. There is no reason to believe she could not send another ten children to foster care before her ovaries are spent. Abstinence is not in this woman’s vocabulary, and it would take a miracle for counselors, priests, preachers, or social service workers to change this woman’s view of parenting.

Situations like these make one wonder how anyone could conclude the country suffers from too much birth control rather than too little. A cynic could take it one step further and question why the welfare system does not insist on comprehensive birth control instead of providing a monetary inducement for procreation. Most responsible women in this society practice a form of birth control at some point during their reproductive life. They raise families, work, go to school, function independently, comprise more than half of the electorate, and a sizable majority including conservative women as not going to vote for a man from the Dark Ages.