An Extremely Limited Defense of Rick Santorum

As I’ve said before, I actually have a little more respect for anti-choicers who reject rape/incest exceptions, because that position is actually more internally consistent. That’s not to say that using state coercion to force a woman to carry a pregnancy resulting from rape to term isn’t barbaric — it is! But that’s because forcing women to carry pre-viability pregnancies to term is barbaric.

Of course, any points that Santorum gets for principle vanish because he believes that women who commit what he claims to be a serious violent offense should be exempt from legal sanction. This position — which is also official GOP policy — indicates 1)gross sexism, 2)a tacit admission that most anti-choicers don’t believe their own rhetoric, or 3)a healthy helping of both.