Giving Rick Santorum a Modicum of Credit Where It's Due

Today's Midday Open Thread on Daily Kos, one of their several daily round-ups of interesting news links, includes this piece about Rick Santorum's comments about how he would counsel against an abortion if one of his daughters were raped. Their headline: "Rick Santorum: a firm believer in a rapist's right to reproduce, even if he's the grandfather." Now, Rick Santorum and I agree on approximately zero political issues, at least within the frame of controversy in modern American politics (I'm pretty sure he's avowedly anti-slavery), but I have to admit that Daily Kos' spin on this statement is a little unfair. There is absolutely zero obligation on a rape victim to abort a pregnancy which results from that rape. People make too damn much of a deal about genetic heritage, in my opinion, and were I in the situation Santorum describes I think an important part of my counsel would be, look, half the DNA comes from a pretty despicable source, but that doesn't actually mean anything about the child.

Now, I'm pretty sure Rick Santorum also believes that abortion should be illegal, including in the case of rape. That's the problem here, not whether he would personally advise his own daughter not to have an abortion in that situation. Politics is about public policy, so let's criticize politicians who want to make bad public policy, not people who might choose as a private course of action something which might be required by bad public policy.