COMMENTARY | Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has announced that he is running for the Republican slot in the 2012 presidential elections. Women from Pennsylvania and every other state in the country should be wary of Santorum and his views on women's rights. He is against women's rights, women's health and against women in the work place. He ought to just come right out and say that a woman's place is in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant.
As a woman who has seen Santorum's campaigns in action and who lives, works, and raises a family in Pennsylvania, the thought of Santorum as president is scary. If his stances on women's rights and women's health were to prove fruitful during his presidency, I and many other women would be left struggling to gain health insurance, get proper medical care, put food on our tables, and would be unable to get fair and equal treatment in the work place (and that is only if we are allowed to get jobs). Santorum would put the women's rights movement back 50 years.
Santorum told NBC's "Meet the Press" that he believes all abortion is wrong. When questioned on the exceptions of abortion for victims of rape and incest, Santorum said, "That would be taking a life, and I believe that any doctor that performs an abortion, I would advocate that any doctor that performs an abortion, should be criminally charged for doing so. "
Wow. That is a scary thought. The former senator believes that doctors who perform abortions (which is currently legal), even ones done for rape victims, incest victims and in the cases of saving a woman's life, should be criminally charged.
Women, are you listening? If this man gets his way and you are found to be pregnant with your rapist's fetus or you have had a pregnancy which cannot be carried to term, your doctor would be at risk of being criminally charged with murder for protecting and caring for you!
In fact, when criticized and questioned on not having an exception (for rape, incest and when a woman's health is at risk), he called those exceptions "phony." His exact response was: "When I was leading the charge on partial birth abortion, several members came forward and said, 'Why don't we just ban all abortions?' Tom Daschle was one of them, if you remember. And Susan Collins, and others. They wanted a health exception, which of course is a phony exception which would make the ban ineffective."
It is possible that you are a woman who is anti-abortion and you agree with Santorum's sentiments when it comes to the re-victimization of women who have suffered rape, incest or who have had their lives put at risk during pregnancy. That is your right. But Santorum doesn't think women should be in the work place either.
In 2005, Santorum's book, "It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good," he writes on his feelings about women in the work place. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "In far too many families with young children, both parents are working, when, if they really took an honest look at the budget, they might find they don't both need to."
He goes on to state that women have told him it was, "socially affirming to work outside the home than to give up their careers to take care of their children." And then he places blame on the feminist movement for this aspect of life, not what was and still is a struggling economy: "The radical feminists succeeded in undermining the traditional family and convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness."
Apparently, Santorum is convinced that women should be happy enough as housewives and mothers. And, if you think that preventing motherhood by the use of contraception would be easy enough, think again. Santorum is against birth control. He says about contraception, "it is harmful to women and harmful to our society -- I don't think it is a healthy thing for our country."
Rick Santorum's stances are against women's health, women's rights and equal treatment for women. He is not a good presidential candidate for women, Republican or Democrat.
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