The media missed the real story, once again.
by Maria Vitale
When former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum appeared in Harrisburg the other night for the Celebrate Life Banquet benefiting the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, a reporter peppered him with questions about a possible Presidential run. After the story appeared on the Internet the next day, haters posted vile comments about Santorum and his ego.
Totally lost was a statement Santorum made during his banquet speech, that when he lost his Senate seat on election night a while back he “felt nothing but gratitude.”
He explained how he had been scheduling his life in five-minute increments and that, in defeat, he realized what he had been missing and what his children had been missing.
While he has been appearing as a contributor on Fox News, his focus the past two years has definitely been family. In May of 2008, he and his wife Karen were blessed with a little girl they call Bella.
Bella was born with a special challenge—three No. 18 chromosomes, instead of the customary two. This disorder, known as trisomy 18, results in death for 90 percent of children before or during birth.
A doctor told the Santorums, “You should let her go.”
They refused, at times fighting a medical establishment that focused more on death rather than life.
The trying circumstances surrounding Bella’s care has given Rick Santorum a glimpse of what medicine will be like under Obamacare.
Santorum gravely predicts that “government-run health care…will result in more deaths than abortion every year.”
He points to the Dutch, who were among the first to legalize assisted suicide. In the Netherlands, Santorum says, patients are “looked at as a burden.” He notes that an estimated 10 percent of deaths there are from euthanasia. Senior citizens wear bracelets with the message: Please don’t euthanize me. They are afraid to go to the hospital because they worry they will not come out alive.
Meanwhile, in this country, Santorum says that, in so-called health care reform, “freedom itself is at stake.” In 2008, he says, “We elected a group of people who promised to take care of you…Everyone would get the health care they need.” The ironic result is that, through medical rationing, many may be denied life-saving medical treatment.
Santorum believes America needs to wake up—just as it had to do when the Nazis were committing atrocities 60 years ago. The people of that time, known since as the Greatest Generation, initially resisted calls to fight the good fight. But eventually, they answered their call, and freedom won.
When Santorum wrapped up his speech in Harrisburg, he didn’t say he had come because he wanted to be President.
He came for a reason more critical than any political aspirations.
“I’m here,” Santorum said, “because Bella needs her Daddy’s voice.”
LifeNews.com Note: Maria Vitale is an opinion columnist for LifeNews.com. She is the Public Relations Director for the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation and Vitale has written and reported for various broadcast and print media outlets, including National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and AP Radio.
