Liberal Web Site Lies: Claims Santorum’s Wife Had Abortion

Politics   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jan 6, 2012   |   12:53PM   |   Washington, DC

The liberal, pro-abortion web site Jezebel, which recently named as its woman of the year an abortion practitioner who injured a woman in a botched abortion, is now making false claims that Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s wife had an abortion.

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.”

But the pro-abortion web site writes:

Let’s get down to brass tacks: Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, Personhood Pledge-signing, Griswold vs. Connecticut-opposing, Mr. Ban Abortion in All Circumstances With No Exception for the Life of the Mother, believes that the actions of his own wife should be treated as criminal. Why? Because, back in 1996, his wife had a procedure that resulted in the deliberate death of her fetus, even though it was a matter of saving her own life.

Karen Santorum’s difficult pregnancy and resultant life-saving, induced early delivery is no secret; in a 2004 interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, her husband characterized the 1996 procedure as a harrowing but necessary. Karen, in her 19th week of pregnancy, received a risky surgery to save a pregnancy that doctors thought had little chance of survival. After the surgery, she came down with an infection, and doctors told Rick that unless the source of the infection — the fetus — was removed, his wife would die and his already-born children would be motherless. The doctor also told Santorum that his wife’s fetus would not survive outside of the womb. According to Santorum, Karen went into labor as a result of the antibiotics, and then doctors gave her a drug that further induced labor. She delivered, and unfortunately the doctors were right.

Conservative writer Dana Loesch says Jezebel “confuses an attempt to undergo surgery to save the life of her child with procedures a woman undergoes a to end the life of her child.”

“The Santorums’ child was not going to live regardless, yet Karen Santorum risked her life to take the pregnancy as far as possible. Both she and her husband committed to an early delivery with hope that a miracle would occur and their child would survive,” Loesch explains. “Karen Santorum wasn’t going to live to carry the baby to term and the baby, due to a defect, didn’t have much of a chance outside the womb, but there was a chance. It does happen.”

Loesch continues:  ” The Santorums chose the route that provided the biggest return for the gamble. How asinine and petty for women to politicize the loss of a child for a straw man argument. Doing all you can to prevent the loss of a child you wanted is nothing like planning the execution of a child you don’t want. Of course, I don’t expect a site operated by drunk, self-described “slut machine(s)” who talk about how they don’t report rape (but like to use it as a political issue nonetheless) to understand the elementary difference. Perhaps, like our President, the issue is “above their pay grade.”

“The entire Jezebel post, and the illogical post to which Jezebel links, are comprised entirely of bitter partisan rhetoric. The suggestion that all conservatives believe  They want so badly to believe that Karen Santorum had an abortion, when absolutely nothing in the story comes anywhere close to supporting such a claim,” she concludes.

The Jezebel post follows on the heels of Fox News commentator Alan Colmes bashing the Santorum family for taking their dead son home to mourn his death before giving him a proper burial and funeral.

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.”

Colmes later apologized.