Rick Santorum urges courage at Pennsylvania March for Life

A former U.S. senator encouraged Pennsylvania March for Life attendees to take a public stand for unborn children, drawing on the faith that changed the course of his own pro-life advocacy.

Rick Santorum, a Republican who represented Pennsylvania in the Senate from 1995 to 2007, reflected at the Sept. 21 march in Harrisburg on how he approached the issue earlier in his political career.

“I was like most folks who are pro-life, which is the easy road, which is to vote pro-life and keep your mouth shut,” Santorum said. “To vote pro-life and never ever author a bill, never champion a cause.”

In 1996, he volunteered to lead the Senate effort to override President Bill Clinton’s veto of a bill that would have banned partial-birth abortion after no other senator stepped forward.

“I was not someone who wanted to do that,” he said of taking a public lead on the issue. “Not someone who was raised to do it, but someone who ran into it because I ran into the Lord.”

He acknowledged the criticism that followed his decision to speak out.

“Did I lose races because of my position? Did I get beat up by the media? Have I been vilified in every possible corner? Yes. Praise God,” Santorum said.

He said those facing criticism in public life or ministry should be willing to accept that cost.

“I say that particularly to the legislators, to the clergy who sometimes may get hesitant in both jobs to speak out and to be bold and to take the criticism and maybe the losses that come with it,” he said.

Santorum recalled spending about six hours debating for the second time partial-birth abortion legislation on the Senate floor in 1998. After the six hours, he said he felt he had more to say that night and called his wife, Karen, before returning to the floor.

“If that’s what God is calling you to do, that’s what you need to do,” he recalled his wife saying.

He spoke for another hour and a half. The next morning, the effort to override Clinton’s veto failed by two votes.

Santorum said he later received a message from a young man who had watched the speech with his girlfriend. She had scheduled an abortion, according to Santorum’s account, but decided against it after hearing him speak.

“You may have lost the vote on the floor of the Senate, but you saved the life of my child,” the young man said, according to the former senator.

Santorum also spoke about his daughter Bella, who was born with trisomy 18, a severe genetic condition. He said doctors expected her to die soon after birth, but she survived.

“With her continuing to fight, I continued to fight, not just for life, but also for the disabled,” he said. “And so I went out, and it actually became the reason I ran for president in 2012 was because of what I thought the health care system was doing to people with disabilities.”

Santorum and his wife later wrote about Bella in Bella’s Gift. Years later, their daughter Elizabeth, who had struggled to have a child, learned of a pregnant woman seeking an adoptive family for her baby girl, who was expected to have disabilities.

Elizabeth met with the woman, who told her that a Sister of Life had given her Bella’s Gift as she considered abortion.

Santorum recalled what the woman said: “After reading the introduction, I decided not to have an abortion.”

Elizabeth told the woman she had written the introduction. The woman had kept the book beside her bed, Santorum said, praying that whoever adopted her daughter would “love her as much as your parents love Bella.”

Elizabeth later adopted the baby, Santorum’s first grandchild.

Santorum urged marchers to remember that they may not see the results of their own efforts.

“You will march today and you may lose a vote in the Senate tomorrow,” he said. “You will march today and there’ll be another 100 abortions in Pennsylvania tomorrow. But remember this: You’re doing what God has called you to do. You are doing his will. You are doing his work. You are standing for his truth.”

Santorum concluded by urging marchers to continue their witness: “Be fearless. Be courageous. Stand for life.”