Not true.
I am 100% Pro Life politically, socially and personally.
However, this is not a Life issue.
Thank you for your comment, Mariner. It is important for me to know that you are pro-life.
You've been on Free Republic much longer than me (although I was a lurker before I signed up to post the first time a bit more than a half-decade ago). In fact, you're one of the earliest people here and I'm guessing you are part of the group that helped make Free Republic what it is today. Longevity deserves respect.
You've said several times (my paraphrase) that many Freepers were reacting emotionally and not out of reason or logic. I hope my response is both calm and reasonable, even if we disagree.
As I said over on the other Santorum baby thread, I think this shows just how divided America is on some very basic questions of the nature of life... even in conservative circles. I think it's clear that both sides here, you and your opponents, consider their views to be obvious common sense and don't understand how anybody could disagree.
I doo agree with you that this is not a clearcut life issue, but I also believe it is one on which the pro-life position has implications.
This was a child, not a piece of tissue, and once it's granted that their Santorum’s child was a baby and not merely a “fetus,” I don't think we have a right to tell a family how to grieve the loss of a child.
The pro-abortion and pro-choice positions also have implications — very bad implications. For those who don't agree that the Santorum’s child was a child, I can understand how this seems very strange and I do agree with you that the leftists will try to use this against the Santorum family, just like they used the Palin’s children against her.
That may very well backfire on them, and backfire badly.
The people who run the pro-abortion movement don't always realize that most people who share their politics aren't so much pro-abortion as pro-choice. Both positions are wrong because they lead to baby-killing, but there are important differences. Most people who want abortion to be legal want individual freedom of choice, but apart from the fanatics, often are very uncomfortable attacking mothers like Mrs. Santorum and Mrs. Palin who made the choice to keep babies in difficult circumstances.
I have debated pro-abortion people who have made the mistake of saying in public that fetuses obviously are not babies because they've “never heard of a funeral for a miscarriage.” That has allowed me to pounce on them, pointing out that funerals **DO** happen for miscarriages if that's what the family wants. Enough pro-choice women have had “wanted” babies die in their womb or have had close friends suffer the loss of a “wanted” baby that the “funeral miscarriage” argument can really antagonize people in an audience, sometimes even creating “cognitive dissonance” in the pro-choice people who start to ask why they get offended when an abortionist objects to a funeral for a miscarriage. After all, is it a baby or not?
Mariner, I can understand why you might not choose to do what the Santorums did. I'm not sure I would, either — I'd definitely want a funeral but might want a closed casket if very young children were involved and if I was afraid how the children would react to seeing the baby. But can you agree that at least some people who are pro-life would do what the Santorum family chose to do, and can you respect their choice in how to grieve even if it wasn't the choice you (or I) would make?
Oh, and by the way, Mariner?
I kissed, hugged, whispered to, and cried over my dead mother, when I had a few private moments.
Dare you call me a necrophile? Was that 'freaky sick'?
Or perhaps was that a son, grieving his mother, telling her he would miss her, and hoping her new home with God was wonderful?
I'm curious to see just how twisted, evil, and hateful you can get, Mariner.
I disagree. Americans are terrified of the reality of death and dying, the end of life. Which is why the mercy-killers are making headway.
We all know about the old Irish wake, where people had a party in the home of the deceased, whose corpse was on display in his coffin in the living room. Not done anymore. Children are carefully protected from any contact with it. Paradoxically, it explains the fascination with fictional death., or horror movies. “Fake death.”