Santorum Has New Rumors

[walkitout]

Basically, if you're reading something quite spectacularly hypocritical about him it is probably not true. Here is Project Vote Smart's transcript of Terry Gross' 2004 interview in which he describes the events in question.

http://www.votesmart.org/speech_detail.php?sc_id=130783

It's later in the interview; searching on "wife" gets you right to it.

I had actually heard this story about the Santorums before, in a context in which purportedly liberal people were freaking out that they had brought the body home and went through a mourning process. I was somewhat offended that anyone would mock an approach that struck me as sensitive and respectful of the shock associated with a late miscarriage/perinatal death. It is not helpful to a family to sort of pretend it didn't happen. There are a lot of ways to deal with this shock and the one chosen by the Santorums deserves respect.

Unlike their politics.

Comments

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

While it was certainly terrible behavior to mock the Santorums' situation, I still think he is hypocritical, even if they didn't technically induce labor. They did both express willingness to do so if it were truly necessary, but Santorum does not support exceptions for the life/health of the mother for anyone else. Moreover, he doesn't seem to realize that other people facing late-term abortions are going through the same thing his family did, and shows no sympathy for them. (Incidentally, the people I know who've had late-term abortions, which, as with almost all such cases, were of much-wanted children, reacted much as the Santorums did in terms of mourning.)

Seems odd to me that the doctors did nothing to try to stop labor, actually (though I'm sure there's a good reason if we knew all the details). You would think that would be more likely to result in a malpractice suit than the other route. I had a kidney infection that sent me into early labor at 35 weeks, and they certainly gave me IV terbutaline then. Of course in that scenario the babies would probably have been fine either way.

exceptions

[walkitout]

Can you give me your evidence for:

"Santorum does not support exceptions for the life/health of the mother". I grant _health_; I'm curious about the "life" part. I won't argue with you on the lack of sympathy for other people making decisions about abortion. Any statement beginning "Santorum lacks sympathy for" appears to be true, at least as near as I can tell.

Time frame on terbutaline is important, in that over time terbutaline has become a lot more suspect for side effects and inefficacy. I have a hard time imagining a hospital defending the decision to stop labor in the situation that Santorum describes. A pregnancy which ended at that point is vastly unlikely to result in a child which "lives" indefinitely in a medical context; a pregnancy which ended a few weeks later might well result in such a situation. A permanently severely disabled and on life support person generates lawsuit judgments that boggle the mind. Deaths have limits.

Re: exceptions

[walkitout]

Oh, and _kidney infection_!?!

Your life has been _way_ too exciting. I'm glad it turned out okay.

ETA: Would have put this in the previous comment, but replying to myself blocked it. *sigh* Anyway. Santorum is certainly hypocritical and I in no way intended to suggest he was not. It was the quite spectacular details which I wanted to discourage being passed on. We don't need to make shit up to make Santorum look bad. He does just fine all on his own.

Re: exceptions

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

“The doctors said they were talking about a matter of hours or a day or two before risking sepsis and both of them might die,” Santorum said. “Obviously, if it was a choice of whether both Karen and the child are going to die or just the child is going to die, I mean it’s a pretty easy call.”

and

Karen, a soft-spoken red-haired 37-year-old, said that “ultimately” she would have agreed to intervention for the sake of her other children.

“If the physician came to me and said if we don’t deliver your baby in one hour you will be dead, yeah, I would have to do it,” she said. “But for me, it was at the very end. I would never make a decision like that until all other means had been thoroughly exhausted.”
-------------
I guess I was wrong about life of the mother ... he originally supported the Hyde Amendment (rape, incest, life of the mother exceptions) and now does not support abortion for rape or incest. But it sounds as though he supported the Hyde Amendment at all only because it was "common ground" (i.e., pass-able) not because he thought it was the best morally.

Terbutaline was still very widely used at the time the Santorums' baby was born. My twins were born in 94, and at that time about 20 to 30 percent of women in that practice -- NOT just mothers of twins -- were on terbutaline "just in case." So it seemed to me like the kind of thing they'd just automatically throw into the mix in a case like this. (I agree that it doesn't make that much sense, but from what I hear doctors are far more likely to get sued when they fail to do "everything possible," even if they're following the standard of care, than when they do too much.)

The position the babies were in put a lot of pressure on my kidneys (also on my lower spine -- my back looked quite flat, like a man's, and I actually had fewer backaches because I couldn't stand swaybacked), and I had recurrent UTIs and bacteremia, which finally ascended into the kidneys. Not fun. It cleared up incredibly fast once they got the antibiotics into me, though. Bob still talks about how I beat him at Scrabble even when I had contractions and a fever of 104 or something.

Re: exceptions

[walkitout]

I think the terbutaline question was in play during the year in question. The FDA and some doctors were trying to limit its use and other doctors were really fighting back. This appears to be from 1998.

http://www.sidelines.org/articles/the-clinical-issues-surrounding-the-use-of-terbutaline-sulfate-for-preterm-labor/

However, it was a real live issue.

We may have to agree to disagree about how a doctor would likely respond to the Santorums' situation. I think I'm paying attention to some details of the situation (baby will not make it and the longer we drag this out, the more likely the mother will have a bad outcome and we'll get sued over that) while you are attending to others (mother wants to keep baby, try to keep baby). I don't think there's any way to answer the question (can you _imagine_ trying to word a poll question?!?).

Just to be utterly clear: I find the Santorums politics despicable and their unwillingness to respect other people's decision making reprehensible. But I think that representing their beliefs accurately will make that clear without having to impute to them things they do not believe.

Re: exceptions

[walkitout]

20-30%!?! "Just in case"?!?

I don't even know what to say.

Re: exceptions

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Yup, that was pretty terrible.

I do think there was likely a very good reason the doctors reacted the way they did. I just wasn't sure what it *was*.