I am not sure someone who is against contraception can win. Rick Santorum is against contraception.
You will find very few people who want married people to have little control of their birthing decisions.
I am opposed to contraception. Ideally the American people would agree with Santurm, the Pope, and myself. But in the abscence of such agreement I would love to see the Vatican’s legally will imposed on the American people.
The degree to which the federal governemnt has control over contraception is constitutionally limited. Santorum as President could try to push for legislation banning its inclusion in Medicaid and banning sales across state lines.
This line of argument regarding Santorum keeps coming up on Huffington Post and other liberal websites. I honestly don't understand it.
Why would liberals who support a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body have a problem with a woman choosing to have lots of kids?
I suppose I could assume unstated motives and say these liberals are advocates of Zero Population Growth and fundamentally object to large families, but as a FReeper, I feel pretty confident your views don't stem from those ideas.
I would have major problems if someone could show me that Santorum believes the government should ban birth control. I don't see him saying that. In any event, it's a dead issue because the Supreme Court ruled decades ago that states could not legally require people to show proof of marriage before buying birth control devices. Whatever I may think about birth control — and as a Protestant, unlike Santorum, I have freedom in my church to be sincerely uncertain of my views in that issue — my line-in-the-sand is abortion, not birth control.
The government has a God-given mandate to protect life. It may have a role in encouraging strong families or encouraging families to have lots of kids, but that is at most an implication of Scripture.
I'll fight for the application of the plain text of the Word of God in public life to stop mass murder of babies, but I will be very hesitant to push for something which is at best implied by Scripture and I'd rather leave doubtful matters for families rather than government to decide. Limited government is pretty basic to being a conservative.