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Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn., used almost his entire speech Tuesday night in Des Moines to respond to recent robocalls around the state that accuse him of being a “pro-life fraud.”
Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (photo by Dave Davidson, TEApublican.com)
Santorum — who has said repeatedly that he is mulling a presidential run in 2012 and was the keynote speaker at at an Iowa Christian Alliance event — said even though he has a “perfect pro-life voting record” during his tenure in the U.S. House and Senate, “the comment about being a pro-life fraud could have applied to me, as it does, unfortunately, to many pro-life legislators.”
“There are a lot of people who vote pro-life, but there are very few people who stand up and fight for life,” he said. “And there is a reason for that: You pay a price.”
He never uttered the word “abortion” during his years in the House or his first term in the Senate, Santorum said, preferring to work behind the scenes on the issue. He thought, and other assured him he was correct, that speaking out on abortion would cost him with voters.
“You pay a price when you stand up out of the foxhole and you fight for life, not just vote for life,” he said.
But he eventually started attending a new church, as well as regular Bible study, and “as I grew, I recognized the blind spots. As a husband, as a father, and as a leader.”
By 1996, he was leading the fight to override President Bill Clinton’s veto of a ban on late-term abortion, and began speaking out on the issue in public. But he still makes mistakes, Santorum said, pointing specifically to his work on behalf of fellow Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, who switched parties and became a Democrat last year. He helped Specter get re-elected, Santorum said, because he promised to support President George W. Bush’s nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I was wrong in retrospect,” he said.
Abortion was the main topic of Santorum’s speech, but he did address another issue he’s well known for: same-sex marriage. Santorum discussed how important it is for Christians to stand up and fight to overturn the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision last April to legalize same-sex marriage, ultimately calling marriage equity “an attack on religious liberty”
“Anybody who stands up and opposes the redefinition of marriage is considered a bigot,” he said. “Someone who speaks from the pulpit is considered hate speech. This is what we face.”
In 2003, Santorum came under fire for publicly comparing homosexuality to incest, bigamy and adultery. As a result, Santorum was the victim of a Google Bomb — a tactic designed to manipulate Google search rankings for certain keywords in order to make someone or something less appealing. To this day, the first few results of a Google search of “Santorum” pertain to a sexual term coined by sex-advice columnist Dan Savage in response to the then-senator’s statements.
Back in October, Santorum visited Iowa to deliver two speeches: one at an event sponsored by Iowa Right to Life and another at an event sponsored by the American Future Fund.
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