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.

WHO-AM radio hosts Jan Mickelson, left, and Steve Deace.

Steve Deace, who hosts a drive-time show on WHO-AM, said society helped create Scott Roeder, the man in custody for the killing of Tiller Sunday morning, by refusing to stop abortion by legal methods.

“Maybe the fact that we have a lawless society that has not protected these babies from infanticide created the Scott Roeders of the world, who in very John Brown-like fashion, illegally took matters into his own hands,” Deace said. “Saying that if the system will not deal with an evil, then to Hell with the system.”

A radical abolitionist, Brown led a gang that brutally killed several pro-slavery figures in Kansas and later led a violent attack upon the United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va. He was eventually arrested, charged with treason, and executed.

Deace danced the line throughout his program between celebrating the fact that Tiller is dead and condemning murder. At one point he discussed vengeance, and how the Bible says vengeance “doesn’t belong to us, it belongs to [God.]”  But he admitted being conflicted, saying he is happy that “babies in Kansas are safer today than they were yesterday while George Tiller was still taking in oxygen.”

He expressed anger at anti-abortion groups expressing remorse for Tiller’s family.

“I don’t feel grief for his family, unless it’s grief that they’re in the same family has him,” Deace said. “How many of their bills were paid over the years by the blood on daddy’s hands. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for that. Maybe I should.”

Earlier in the day, another of WHO-AM’s conservative hosts, Jan Mickelson, also discussed the similarities between Tiller’s murderer and John Brown.

But ultimately, Mickelson’s biggest concern was that the murder would tip the scales in the debate of issues ranging from hate crime legislation to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We’re within the mantle of a lot of cultural clash and friction points,” he said. “This murder is already being used as justification for ‘Fill in the blank.’”

Mickelson did not get into specifics about how Tiller’s murder would effect debate of these issues.

“You have to have some ability to pull off something like that. I just don’t have it.”

Leach also clarified the widely reported fact that in addition to publishing some of alleged Tiller murderer Scott Roeder’s works in his newsletter, Prayer & Action News, he also met with him. Leach said their last meeting was more than a decade ago.

“He seemed like a nice guy. Personable, good sense of humor,” Leach said.

Kim Lehman, president of Iowa Right to Life, attempted to distance her organization from activists like Leach by telling the Register “the pro-life community is opposed to murder. That’s the whole point.”