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Santorum's classic libertarian position on contraception

By Scott Tibbs, January 13, 2012

Rick Santorum has the Left in a tizzy with his unashamed and unapologetic Christian faith and his uncompromising positions on sexual morality and protecting innocent human life. But some of the most hysterical screeching has come from those who say he would ban contraception. He won't.

As National Review points out, Santorum's position is actually the classic libertarian position regarding federal policy. State governments can choose to do what they wish and can ban it, while the federal government stays out of the debate. Furthermore, Santorum would eliminate federal funding for contraception as well as federal mandates that insurance coverage must cover contraception.

It is true that Santorum said a while back that he is the only Republican candidate who would address the issue of contraception. But he didn't actually say that he was going to seek to ban contraception. He said he would be the only candidate who would use the bully pulpit to speak about the issue and the harm it has done.

There's no question that Griswold v. Connecticut began the downhill slide regarding sexual morality. Once sexual activity became disconnected from responsibility for the consequences of the sex act, promiscuity and other sexual immorality followed. The divorce rate spiked, but even as the divorce rate stabilized we have seenb a worse consequense, which is an increasing number of couples are not getting married at all. Griswold laid the legal foundation for Roe v. Wade and a slaughter that is unprecedented in human history.

But let's say, hypothetically, that Santorum actually was advocating a federal ban on contraception. I happen to live in the real world, and in the real world that is not going to happen. There is not the political will to get it done. For crying out loud, it took eight years to finally get the barbaric practice of partial birth abortion banned, from when Congress started trying to pass it over President Clinton's veto in 1995 to it finally getting signed into law in 2003.

I take a position that goes a little bit farther. I think we should ban "contraceptives" that act as abortifacients. (This includes the so-called "morning after pill" as well as RU-486.) One of the great things about the debate over the "personhood" amendment in Mississippi is that after years of denying that the birth control pill acts as an abortifacient, abortion-rights advocates were forced to admit that the birth control pill can actually kill a fertilized egg by preventing implantation. If abortion opponents are serious when we say that human life begins at fertilization, then we should extend protection for all human life from that point forward.

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