Teaparty darling Rick Santorum restated his stern view on abortion last week: it's murder, no matter what the circumstances. Doesn't matter if it's incest, or rape, doesn't matter if the victim is eleven years-old. This purportedly small government conservative is eager to use the power of The State to force rape victims to bear rapists' children and jail doctors willing to intervene. Santorum calls any exceptions "phony excuses" and led the charge to outlaw partial birth procedures no matter what the reason. But Santorum is willing to make one exception. Guess which one?

Karen [Santorum] was going to die if her pregnancy was not ended, if the fetus was not removed from her body. So, at 20 weeks, one month before what doctors consider ‘viability’, labor was artificially induced and the infected fetus was delivered. It died shortly thereafter.

Neonatal specialists consider 24 - 26 weeks the earliest a viable infant can be delivered, and even then the baby faces enormous risks and lifelong complications. The earliest delivery I could find is 21 weeks and that figure is controversial. No one would expect a fetus suffering from a raging, deadly infection to survive a 20 week delivery. Rather than treat the problem and hope for the best, thewas made to induce full labor at four and a half months, expel a nonviable fetus, and terminate the pregnancy.

Rick Santorum agreed to what he and his prolife cohorts define as a partial birth abortion, and for a very good reason, to save his wife's life. Karen Santorum was reportedly upset at first, but later noted had she died it would have deprived her other young children of a mother. And she's absolutley right. That's the whole freaking point of giving families privacy and the right to choose when they find themselves in the middle of a life and death tragedy they did not ask for and do not want. The same right the Santorums utilized, the same rights they would now like to take away from other American families, no phony excuses, no exceptions -- as long as they're not named Santorum.