Rick Santorum, the Unborn Deserve Better from You [Catholic Caucus]

Catholic Lane ^ | 06/12/11 | Mary Kochan

[Mary Kochan]

In case you missed Meet the Press Sunday morning:

Blah, blah, blah, job growth... unemployment numbers. Blah, blah, blah, recession... debt reduction. Blah, blah, blah recovery... tax credits. Blah, blah, blah health care... social security. Blah, blah, blah, Democrats... Republicans. Blah.

And so it went up to the interview with Rick Santorum and through the first 12 minutes and 41 seconds of his appearance, when David Gregory finally got around to asking about something vital, critical, pivotal – the number one make or break issue for any candidate, the single most important issue facing our country, an issue important in the way that the consignment of Jews to gas chambers was important to Nazi Germany.

Gregory: One more question on abortion, an issue you care deeply about. I, I want to be clear on this. Do you believe that there should be any legal exceptions for rape or incest when it comes to abortion?

There’s the pitch. Santorum could have hit it right out of the park. And there wasn’t any reason not to. The format was going to actually allow him time to answer (I mean, how often does that happen?) so he wasn’t under the pressure of having to give a 5-second response. He was not under any obligation to stay within the frame Gregory put on the issue and I’m sorry, but at this point in his career, with his experience, there is simply no excuse for him falling into liberal rhetorical traps on national television. The first trap was in Gregory’s insertion of “you believe” into the question. It was like he programmed Rick Santorum, so that once Santorum started answering, he could not get away from saying “I believe,” even gratuitously adding at one point that he was just giving his “opinion.”

Santorum: I believe that life begins at conception, and that that life should be cut--should be guaranteed under the Constitution. That is a person, in my opinion.

Gregory: So even in a case of rape or incest, that would be taking a life?

Santorum: That would be taking a life, and, and I believe that, that any doctor who performs an abortion--that--I would advocate that any doctor that performs an abortion should be criminally charged for doing so. I don't--I've never supported criminalization of abortion for mothers, but I do for people who perform them. I believe that life is sacred. It's one of those things in the Declaration of Independence. We are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, and the first is life. And I believe that that life should be protected at the moment it is a human life. And at conception it is biologically human, and it's alive. It's a human life, it should be a person under the Constitution.

Let’s avert our eyes from this embarrassing performance a moment to discuss why “I believe” is falling into a trap:

1. Your personal beliefs, if that is all they are, are not the stuff upon which to ask other men to depend. They are not the stuff upon which to base law, or leadership, or morality, because asserting a belief does not provide a basis for it, does not indicate why you believe it or why anyone else should.

2. Your personal beliefs, in so far as that is what they are, are no more valid than the personal beliefs of anyone else. There is no warrant to ask others to conform their own beliefs or actions to them. Listeners will merely shrug and think, “So what. Who cares what he believes? He has no business trying to control my life with his beliefs.”

3. “You/I believe” is a kind of code that tells the Left-trained media-lapping public that what comes next is a religious statement. The unspoken part of the phrase is “as a Catholic.” The point is that every time Rick Santorum said, “I believe”, he might just a well have said, “As a Catholic, I believe....” It signals irrelevance, like holding up a sign telling everyone in the audience, “Ignore the sectarian ramblings to follow.” And that of course is the Left’s intended effect. The second trap Gregory set was in stating his question in such a way as to move the sympathy of the audience to the victim of the rape or incest and to negate the very real existence of an innocent third party – the unborn baby. Santorum should have made that unborn baby at least as real to his listeners as Gregory was making the victims of rape and incest by his question.

Santorum could have leaned forward; he could have looked animated; he could have spoken with a passion welling up from heartfelt recognition that lives depend upon the words I next utter and he could have said things like this:

David, we have thousands of citizens in this country who were conceived by rape or incest. They are valuable human beings who did not deserve to be punished for the crimes of their fathers. Do you think we should be sending the message to them that they should not exist – that they are worthless garbage because of how they were conceived?

Or

David, in 1977, in the case of Coker v. Georgia, the Supreme Court decided it was cruel and unusual punishment to administer the death penalty for rape. If it is cruel and unusual punishment to kill the perpetrator of the rape, how can it be anything other than cruel and a horrible injustice to take the life of the innocent baby conceived by rape or incest through no fault of its own?

Or

David, feminists have correctly pointed out for many years that rape is about more than just sex – it is about abuse of power. In rape, a man uses his superior physical strength – that he should be using to protect women – to violently overpower a woman. We should not be sending a pregnant woman who has been raped the message that we expect her now to turn around and use her superior power over her unborn baby to take his or her life instead of protecting and nurturing that baby. She and the baby are both victims of the rapist and we should love seek healing for them both.

Or

David, nothing has empowered and sheltered those who commit rape and incest more than the practices of Planned Parenthood. Girls who have been victims of incest need protection, not an abortion that covers up the evidence of the crime and returns them for more abuse. And it is simply a myth that what women who have been raped want is to take the life of their innocent babies. What they want is healing and for justice to be done. How is it just to take the life of an innocent baby for these terrible crimes? How does another act of violence heal anything? You see if Rick Santorum would have passionately answered along these lines, he would have avoided the traps set for him by Gregory. Moreover, he would have been properly speaking as a Catholic in the public square. Saying “I believe” is quite contrary to the way the Church tells us Catholics we ought to address ourselves to our fellow citizens, especially on life issues. Instead of talking about what I/we believe, we should be talking about what we – meaning us and our neighbors, religious or otherwise -- know.

We know that the unborn baby is a separate human person from the mother and the father. We know that the right to life is the first right, without which no other rights make any sense. We know that one of the express purposes for the existence of our government is to protect that right. We know that law and might do not make right, but that law must be based on the truth of the dignity of the human person. We know that innocent children should not be punished for the crimes of their fathers. We know these things and we should state what we know clearly, without hesitancy, without shrinking back and looking vaguely discomforted by the topic. And so should Rick Santorum, already.

(© 2011 Mary Kochan)

[Mary Kochan]

Thank you, and thanks to all who read it and commented. I would be grateful if some of you found it worthy to send the link to it around to some of your friends by email. Catholic Lane is gradually getting known, we have writers doing Catholic radio spots regularly now, but anything you do to help get word out about the site is MUCH appreciated!

Pentecost blessings to all.

[Mary Kochan]

The problem is that we get so excited about pro-life Catholic candidates, that we really don’t even consider their competence in delivering a pro-life message. We constantly settle for them as though that was the best we could do.

It is going to take both, Kent. It is going to take real conviction and passion for the unborn — which he may have, but certainly did not demonstrate yesterday. And it is going take an ability to put that message across in the national media. We have to demand BOTH from our candidates, and not just settle. Perhaps if he knows that we expect better, he will deliver better.

As for all the stuff about the Church etc. I think you are asking for a bit much to go into one article. But if you ever read the full body of my work, which consists of hundreds of articles, you will see that I have addressed and continue to address many of those other issues.