Rick Santorum, Pledges to Ban Porn, Same-Sex Marriages

How do you throw away a campaign in a single statement?  I’ll tell you how, pledge to ban porn.

Rick Santorum is always good for a good laugh.

The Family Leader, a conservative Christian organization based in Iowa, wants all the GOP candidates to sign their pledge, entitled “The Marriage Vow – A Declaration of Dependence Upon Marriage and Family.” The vow asks candidates to affirm a pro-marriage stance, oppose same-sex unions, defineshomosexuality as a “choice” (stating there is no empirical scientific proof that being gay is genetic), and notes that marriage is undermined by adulterous factors like quickie divorces and pornography.

And pornography? A federal law or amendment banning pornography could become a problem in an industry that is disseminated in hard copy formats and on the Internet (not to mention via phones). But these guys, Bachmann and Santorum, are free-market Republicans, correct? A ban on porn would facilitate the emergence of an illegal underground industry (considering the 40 million Americans access porn sites regularly). It is already a multi-billion-dollar per year industry (and that’s just on the Internet). Perhaps a return to the days of Prohibition (just substitute sex for alcohol) might be necessary for the government to begin regulating the adult industries (which are already regulated — but aren’t Republicans against most governmental regulating of businesses?). Besides, banning pornography for these guys would be simple. Unlike many who use pornography as a sexual stimulant and relationship enhancer, Bachmann and Santorum obviously do not need such in their lives, having eleven children between them in their respective marriages.

http://news.yahoo.com/santorum-joins-bachmann-pledges-ban-porn-same-sex-214900881.html

This is where our current pool of Republican presidential candidates gets really scary.  On one hand they’ll tell you that they want lower taxes and less government intrusion in our lives.  Then they are telling us they want to control what we do with our bodies, what we do in the bedroom, how we get married, how we get divorced, what religion we conform to and what we look at on the internet.  They keep using the phrase “free market” but apparently you only get to participate in the free market if you are a billion dollar per year oil firm and you lobby like crazy.

Now, here’s where it gets really interesting.  You see Rick Santorum is one dangerously confused denialist.  He is opposed to abortion under any and all circumstances when it comes to you, your daughter or your wife.  But, he will make an exception for his own wife:

Here’s the Santorums’ description of their second trimester abortion, written by Steve Goldstein, Philadelphia Inquirer,  May 4, 1997

Karen was in her 19th week of pregnancy. Husband and wife were in a suburban Virginia office for a routine sonogram when a radiologist told them that the fetus Karen was carrying had a fatal defect and was going to die.

After consulting with specialists, who offered several options including abortion, the Santorums decided on long-shot intrauterine surgery to correct an obstruction of the urinary tract called posterior urethral valve syndrome.

A few days later, rare “bladder shunt” surgery was performed at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. The incision in the womb carried a high risk of infection.

Two days later, at home in the Pittsburgh suburb of Verona, Karen Santorum became feverish. Her Philadelphia doctors instructed her to hurry to Pittsburgh’s Magee-Women’s Hospital, which has a unit specializing in high-risk pregnancies.

After examining Karen, who was nearly incoherent with a 105-degree fever, a doctor at Magee led Santorum into the hallway outside her room and said that she had an intrauterine infection and some type of medical intervention was necessary. Unless the source of the infection, the fetus, was removed from Karen’s body, she would likely die.

At minimum, the doctor said, Karen had to be given antibiotics intravenously or she might go into septic shock and die.

The Santorums were at a crossroads.

Once they agreed to use antibiotics, they believed they were committing to delivery of the fetus, which they knew would most likely not survive outside the womb.</strong>

“The doctors said they were talking about a matter of hours or a day or two before risking sepsis and both of them might die,” Santorum 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.”

Shivering under heated blankets in Magee’s labor and delivery unit as her body tried to reject the source of the infection, Karen felt cramping from early labor.

Santorum agreed to start his wife on intravenous antibiotics “to buy her some time,” he said.

The antibiotics brought Karen’s fever down. The doctor suggested a drug to accelerate her labor.

“The cramps were labor, and she was going to get into more active labor,” Santorum said. “Karen said, `We’re not inducing labor, that’s an abortion. No way. That isn’t going to happen. I don’t care what happens.’ ”

As her fever subsided, Karen – a former neonatal intensive-care nurse – asked for something to stop the labor. Her doctors refused, Santorum recalled, citing malpractice concerns.

Santorum said her labor proceeded without having to induce an abortion.

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.”

The fetus was delivered at 20 weeks, at least a month shy of what most doctors consider viability.

http://oursilverribbon.org/blog/?p=188

Isn’t it interesting how opinions change when you’re the one effected by the outcome.  Rick Santorum would like to ban abortion in all cases meaning that if your wife is raped she’ll be forced to carry the rapists child, if your daughter becomes pregnant at age 15 because Rick Santorum banned preventative birth control and the morning after pill she’ll have no choice but to have her child because Santorum’s religion and personal beliefs will dictate the laws that rule you.

Santorum:

“They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom or in cultural issues. That is not how traditional conservatives view the world.”

“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” you may remember this well-known phrase from the United States Declaration of Independence these three aspects are listed among the “unalienable rights” or sovereign rights of man.  Santorum apparently would like to throw what makes America great right out the window.