CNN's Piers Morgan on Monday actually asked Karen Santorum if her husband Rick is "anti-women?"
Without batting an eye, Mrs. Santorum gave an answer that would put this entire issue to rest if her husband were a Democrat (video follows with transcript and commentary):
PIERS MORGAN, HOST: I think he was specifically talking about the issue of contraception which has been so dominant. I know that because of your Catholic faith you have a strong position on this. You’ve also got young daughters, of course, and people will say, you know, how do you feel about changing times? I mean, they’re going to grow up. They’re going to grow up in an era which is, you know, contraception is very widely prevalent amongst young women in this country.
You wouldn’t know that from the way Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke and her fawning media have been behaving for the past three months.
According to them, contraception is tremendously expensive, and unless every employer regardless of religious beliefs provides it immediately, there's going to be another baby boom.
But I digress.
MORGAN: And many of them are thinking, “If Rick Santorum becomes president, what does it mean for me? Is he, is he anti-women? Is he anti- us having contraception?” What is his view?
So, it makes me really sad that the media tries to do that to him. They try to make it look like he is something that he’s not. Rick is a great guy. He’s completely supportive of women. He’s surrounded by a lot of very strong women, and I think women have nothing to fear when it comes to contraceptives he will do nothing on that issue. I think the real issue was what I had said about the religious freedom issue and not allowing the government to be intrusive in our lives and force us to do something against our conscience.
MORGAN: But when you say he’ll do nothing on the contraceptive issue, do you mean that if he was to become president, that he would basically respect a woman’s right to have contraception if that’s what she chose to do?
SANTORUM: Absolutely. And he has said that.
Indeed he has, doing so when this issue was likely first concocted by the Obama administration in the form of a January 6 interview with the Washington Post’s Melinda Henneberger:
The former Pennsylvania senator recently told ABC’s Jake Tapper that, yes, he disagrees with Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision that struck down a ban on contraception.
He said Friday evening that it’s the idea that states don’t have a right to pass such a law that he opposes, because he does not see the right to privacy as a constitutional right envisioned by its signers. This is hardly a new argument.
“It could have been a law against buying shoestrings; that it was contraception has nothing to do with it. States have the right to pass even dumb laws.”
To be clear, he does think that laws banning birth control would be dumb “for a number of reasons. Birth control should be legal in the United States. The states should not ban it, and I would oppose any effort to ban it.’’
That was on January 6 over two months ago.
Yet regardless of how many times Santorum has made this clear, the media continue with the totally false narrative that he wants to ban contraceptives.
As for my contention earlier that Mrs. Santorum's comments would settle this issue if her husband were a Democrat, consider that all Hillary Clinton had to do was an interview on CBS's 60 Minutes in 1992, and concerns about Bill's infidelity were completely settled.
Twenty years later, it appears there's nothing the Santorums can do to convince the same media that if elected president, he's not going to ban birth control.
Why do you think that is?
