Rape and pregnancy are not gifts from God

Rick Santorum’s position on abortion is as close to a quagmire as anything could possibly get, which is ironic because he’s remarkably consistent on the issue.

Kind of.

Santorum would amend the U.S. Constitution to ban all abortions if he had his way.

According to him, abortion is not kosher even in the instance of rape or to save the mother’s life. He’s really sticking to his pro-life guns (if you ignore his support of capital punishment), which is admirable in an appalling kind of way.

The problem is that his wife, to save her own life, was tragically forced to induce labor early with knowledge that the fetus would not survive.

This is heartbreaking and should not be taken lightly, but it’s also an abortion.

Last week, the good senator stated that even if his daughter was raped he would counsel her to not have an abortion.

“I believe and I think that the right approach is to accept this horribly created, in the sense of rape, but nevertheless, in a very broken way, a gift of human life, and accept what God is giving to you,” Santorum said in an interview with Piers Morgan.

Rape, Senator, is never a gift.

Although most of us support a woman’s right to make reproductive choices about her own body, we also recognize that there are those who legitimately believe that abortion is morally abhorrent.

Those who feel that way have every right to feel that way.

But Santorum’s statement was unreasonable, and it raises a couple of concerns. First, the experience with his wife makes us question whether he’d follow through on this very strong statement.

If he would, more power to him, we guess. If you’re going to force your opinion on everyone, it should apply to your daughter too.

Second, we must remember that Santorum is a man worth as much as $2.6 million.

His daughter can afford to carry the pregnancy to term, and, if she chooses, raise the baby. Not everyone has that luxury.

No woman should be forced to carry a child for nine months against her consent.

There is no such argument for rape. The pregnancy, like the rape, was forced.

The woman may choose to abort or she may choose to carry the child to term. Either decision has consequences.

Women may face stigma for being pregnant. The pregnancy might be a constant reminder of the psychological horror of the rape, or the woman might raise the child and find joy in caretaking.

The important thing is that the choice exists. For Santorum’s daughter, it does.

As many as one in three poor women, however, are forced to continue pregnancies they would otherwise terminate, due to federal restrictions on abortion funding.

At the risk of repeating ourselves, rape is never a gift.