Bob Schieffer And Santorum Clash Over His Belief That Prenatal Care Leads To Abortions

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Bob Schieffer And Santorum Clash Over His Belief That Prenatal Care Leads To Abortions

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/bob-schieffer-and-santorum-clash-over-his-belief-that-prenatal-care-leads-to-abortions/

by Josh Feldman | 12:06 pm, February 19th, 2012



During a recent campaign stop, Rick Santorum brought up the inclusion of prenatal care in the Affordable Care Act, and made a bold proclamation that giving women prenatal care leads to more abortions. On Face the Nation today, Bob Schieffer challenged Santorum on his assertion, asking him if what he was saying is fundamentally unscientific and against what the majority of doctors would advise.

Schieffer asked Santorum to clarify his remarks, because many people see prenatal care as having less to do with abortion and more to do with the general health and well-being of an expectant woman. Santorum argued that most prenatal testing is done to identify deformities in utero, and so he doesn’t have an issue with overall prenatal care. However.

“I didn’t say prenatal care shouldn’t be covered. We’re talking about specifically prenatal testing and specifically amniocentesis, which is a… procedure that creates a risk of miscarriage when you have it and is done for the purposes of identifying maladies of a child in the womb, which in many cases, in fact, most cases, physicians recommend, particularly if there’s a problem, recommend abortion.”

Santorum got emotional as he explained how his child was diagnosed with trisomy 18, a genetic disorder caused by the presence of an extra chromosome in the cells of an infant, and in most scenarios, children with that disorder are encouraged to be aborted. Schieffer pointed out that Santorum also had a child that was still-born, meaning it died in the uterus, but Santorum interrupted to note the baby was alive for two hours before passing away.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Prenatal testing does not equal prenatal care!

What kind of first class idiot is he, anyway?

He just wants to twist everything around so that he ends up talking about abortion.

My. God.

I wouldn't vote for this idiot for dog catcher.

[Warpy]

2. That arrogant man and the sheer breadth of his ignorance

never fail to astonish me. His is the worst dumbfuckery about women and health care I have ever heard, even the bishops don't quite get that low.

Would that he had followed his conscience 20 years ago and gone into a monastery instead of marrying and going into politics.

Insurance companies love him, of course, since they never wanted to cover any of those icky woman things in the first place.

[HockeyMom]

3. His letting it live for only two hours was for HIS benefit

not the baby. Was the baby in pain? Was the baby AWARE of it's parents? No, this is hypocritical. He cares SO much for these babies. No, he cares about HIMSELF and HIS agenda.

[liberal N proud]

4. And Frothy just smiled

Like the true idiot that he is.

[indepat]

12. Frothy so often froths at the mouth sputtering nonsensical

balderdash, it's remarkable that any rational person could possibly support his run for the presidency.

[Newest Reality]

5. The kind of issues

that are being presented tell me that we are not having anything near a civilized, mature and enlightened culture, nor are we even heading in that direction, if you go by the mainstream, (crazy-making) media and the current Republican circus.

While I do get the sense that there are many civilized, mature, well-informed and even rather enlightened people who have a compassionate and tolerant social sense of things, the cavalcade of noise seems to be, in part, an effort to drown-out the pragmatic and the sensible.

And so, as one aspect of this theater of the rhetorically absurd, we watch the War for the Uterus march forward and in Virginia they are preparing to cross over enemy lines with a trans-vaginal ultrasound.

So, the OP makes perfect sense as propaganda from one of the Generals of the Republican Regressive Army.

[Quantess]

6. Whoa.

What a fucking idiot. He's dangerously stupid.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

7. Somebody should remind Rick

that no sane doctor is going to hold a gun to a woman's head and demand that she get an abortion if it is discovered that her child has a particular malady and that the family can make their own decisions about how they wish to proceed with the pregnancy. "Encouraged to" does not=Force. I suspect that people like him seem to regard knowledge that prenatal testing might uncover as dangerous simply because people might not make the same decision that they would when faced with difficult circumstances. However, families making their own decisions about their reproductive lives is how things are SUPPOSED to work in our (still mostly free) country. It really makes me mad that he would demand the same rights for himself and his family that he would actively deny other people.

[part man all 86]

8. I am so glad that Santorum has foot in mouth disease.

[LiberalEsto]

9. Against PRE-NATAL care?

This crazy person needs to be placed in a quiet room and heavily medicated. For a long time.

[Kber]

10. I had an amnio when my (as it turns out perfectly healthy) daughter tested positive

in a pre-natal blood screen for a fatal birth defect.

Took 2 weeks to get the results. A very looong 2 weeks.

Anyway, the amnio takes a bit and the tech took the opportunity to give me any my husband a 45 minute lecture about how every life was a blessing, how her son was born with a defect (a cleft lip, if I remember) and he was "just fine". And I'm sitting there on the examination table, finally pregnant after 5 years of trying, listening to this idiot compare a correctable birth defect with a fatal one.

She's really lucky I didn't slap her and finally my husband, after some polite attempts at shutting her up finally said something like "Shut the fuck up" which worked.

Finally the doc comes in and she's still trying to talk me out of even asking for my test results and he says "Look, probably the blood test was a false positive, but if you are very unlucky you will have to make a decision, but if you decide to continue the pregnancy the doctors and nurses in the delivery room need to know what they are dealing with if you aren't going to inflict unnecessary pain and suffering on your baby."

He's lucky I didn't kiss him! It was just so reasonable a position that we should make decisions based on facts and science.

[MissB]

11. I had a bunch of amnios with my second child.

They were done to track whether he was becoming anemic during the pregnancy. I knew the risk each time, but it was the only FUCKING WAY TO MAKE SURE MY FETUS WOULD SURVIVE.

That man is delusional. Fucking Handmaids USA if he is somehow elected.

[rebecca_herman]

13. So much for the sanctity of life

The abortion issue aside, which is none of his damn business, does he realize this could lead to newborn babies with medical conditions dying because they needed immediate, specialized care that the parents/doctors couldn't arrange for ahead of time because they were unaware of the condition?

[Ilsa]

14. I was going to post this.

If doctors and parents in smaller cities or working out of smaller hospitals know about a congenital condition, they can arrange for a higher level of care in another hospital. It can be lifesaving for both mother and baby.

Santorum is an ignorant but arrogant man with a microphone and already too much influence on public policy.

[Ilsa]

15. "Prenatal care leads to abortions": I think Santorum is projecting. nt