Today in Rick Santorum Says Something Stupid

[Content Note: This post discusses reproductive rights and sexual violence.]

Rick Santorum says lots of stupid things. I mean, he's basically a one-man stupid things saying machine. If the things that came out of his mouth were a Transformer, they'd transform into a dysfunctional hunk of stupid metal made exclusively of stupid parts with lots of little stupid bits sticking out all over it. The man is full of fuckery, is what I'm saying.

And every time he opens his mouth to disgorge another vomit-chunk of cruel, wretched, compassionless stupidity, it's somehow worse than the previously rancid pile of muck that fell from his lips after being malformed in his contemptibly antipathetic brainpan. To wit:

Standing steadfast as the most socially right-wing candidate in the GOP presidential field, Rick Santorum has repeatedly touted his extreme anti-choice position, which dictates that abortion should be uniformly illegal, even in cases of rape or incest. He even suggested that physicians who provide abortions to such victims should be criminally charged.

Last Friday, CNN's Piers Morgan asked Santorum to clarify his reasoning behind such a callous position. Insisting that "it's not a matter of religious values," Santorum explained that sexual assault victims should "accept this horribly created" pregnancy because it is "nevertheless a gift in a very broken way" and that, when it comes down to it, a victim just has "to make the best out of a bad situation":

SANTORUM: Well, you can make the argument that if she doesn't have this baby, if she kills her child, that that, too, could ruin her life. And this is not an easy choice. I understand that. As horrible as the way that that son or daughter and son was created, it still is her child. And whether she has that child or doesn't, it will always be her child. And she will always know that. And so to embrace her and to love her and to support her and get her through this very difficult time, I've always, you know, I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you. As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can't think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.

The problem with Santorum's sense of humanity is that it doesn't seem to extend to the victim.

Yes. Indeed, that seems to be the problem with virtually every position Santorum holds: His definition of humanity almost always excludes women and other people with uteri.

As always, I do dearly love (read: detest with the fiery passion of 10,000 suns) the fact that Rick Santorum is so catastrophically incapable of self-reflection that he is able to acknowledge that rape (forcing a woman to do something with her body she doesn't want to do) is a Terrible Thing, while simultaneously asserting that the denial of abortion (forcing a woman to do something with her body she doesn't want to do) is a Moral Imperative.

I'm really hard-pressed to see why I should be any less contemptuous of a man who sits at a big mahogany desk in Washington making decisions about my body without my consent than I should be of a man who used physical force to make decisions about my body without my consent.

Undoubtedly, Mr. Santorum would be outraged and horrified to be compared, even obliquely, to a rapist.

As well he should be. I am horrified to have to make it.

Of course, a man who holds the position that he should be able to legislate away my bodily autonomy and supersede my consent about what happens to my body shouldn't be too goddamned surprised by the comparison.