Alan Colmes Attacks Santorum for Bringing Dead Son Home

Politics   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jan 2, 2012   |   7:36PM   |   Washington, DC

Former Fox News show host Alan Colmes was taken to task for mocking pro-life Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who brought home his dead son who died from a fatal birth defect so his family could mourn.

Santorum’s family experienced the painful loss when his wife Karen went to get an ultrasound of their unborn baby Gabriel. The doctor told the couple, “Your son has a fatal defect and is going to die.” But Gabriel was born alive.

As Santorum recalls, “For two hours he lived a life that knew only love.”

During an appearance on Fox News, Colmes said “Once they get a hold of the crazy things he’s said and done like taking his two-hour old baby who died right after childbirth home and played with it for a couple of hours so his other children would know that the child was real.”

Rich Lowry, a conservative writer for National Review, retorted: “That’s a cheap shot, Alan. To say it’s crazy, something that’s that personal and hurtful as losing a child and to mock it like that is beyond the pale and beneath you. I even think some of the dastardly characters we have in the main stream media are not going to go as low as you just have Alan.”

 

At an event in Iowa later today, ABC News reports:

Santorum explained that it was important for his other children to “know they had a brother.”

Santorum’s wife, Karen, who was at the event and listened to her husband talk about the experience, began to weep. “It’s just so inappropriate,” she said as tears streamed from her eyes.

Meanwhile, Colmes eventually apologized for the remarks.

The couple’s heartbreaking experience with infant loss became the subject of Karen’s book, Letters to Gabriel,  which has helped countless mothers deal with the deaths of their newborn babies.

Santorum faced another crisis when his daughter, Bella, was diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a chromosomal condition which results in stillbirth 50 percent of the time. At first, Santorum was emotionally detached from his disabled daughter but, when she faced her own battle for life, he suddenly realized, “This child…can do nothing but love me.”

Santorum once observed, “That’s me with the (Heavenly) Father—I am so profoundly disabled in His eyes.”

Against all odds, little Bella recently celebrated her 182nd week of life. According to Santorum, the one-year survival rate for Trisomy 18 is 1 percent.

As Santorum says, “These children have so much to teach us.”