Did you know this about Rick?
He literally forced his other children to hold his dead child after it was dead for about 12+ hours!
I read this awful information in the article "The Path of the Righteous Man":
How Rick Santorum became the nation's evangelical poster boy," written by Mike Newall in Philadelphia Citypaper. (from their 2005 archives)
Join me below the squiggle ....
The author, Mike Newall, interviewed many people who knew Rick Santorum at varying stages of his life and wrote a very interesting article.
But I was totally unprepared for reading the following:
Santorum gained national prominence in 1996 when he spearheaded the Republican effort to override President Clinton's veto of the ban on partial-birth abortion. Santorum writes that managing the bill was "one of the most memorable and transforming moments of my life." During the debate, a sonogram showed that a baby Karen was carrying had a fatal birth defect and would die shortly after birth. At 20 weeks, Karen lay in the hospital near death with a 105-degree fever. Doctors warned that Karen could die unless labor was induced — an option the Santorums considered an abortion since it would result in the certain death of the child. Karen went into labor before a decision had to be made.
Gabriel Michael Santorum lived for only two hours. The Santorums spent the night in the hospital bed with their lifeless baby lying between them. The next morning they brought the palm-sized corpse to Karen's parent's house. They had their other children pose for pictures and cuddle with Gabriel. They sang lullabies and held a private mass.
Let me repeat for this to sink in:
They had their other children pose for pictures and cuddle with (THE NOW VERY DEAD) Gabriel.
(Bold=mine)
If this is true, nothing more can be said. FORCING your children to cuddle the dead body of a baby, take pictures, singing lullabys and then holding a mass with it is abusive. Parents can do this to work out their grief. But children will have feelings of survivor guilt and terror at the sight of the dead baby. This should have resulted in DYFS being called. And the children should have been removed from the care of these deranged parents.
These actions are the actions of utter narcissists who are so locked up in their own beliefs and who cannot even begin to imagine how this might horrify or traumatize the sensibilities of any child. These are the actions of pathological narcissists who are completely without empathy. When you are a grieving parent and have other children, it is your job to HELP the other children, not permanently traumatize them to fulfill your ideological beliefs.
PUTTING A DEAD BABY IN A CHILD'S HANDS! Are you effin kidding me!
Now I know why he doesn't have any empathy for the rest of us; whether we live or die. All he cares about is keeping his narcissistic world intact with his delusional fantasies.
WHY ISN'T THIS BROUGHT UP EVERYWHERE? Any parent (or someone who has been a child!) will shudder at this revelation.
FORGET the 'man on dog'.... he needs to forever be known as the ghoulish man he is: forcing a dead baby into his living children's arms. (Well their therapists will have their hands filled when his children finally break free from his ghoulish cult.)
This man has ice running through his veins and delusions running through his mind.
And he is running for vice/president! This is what the Republicans have to offer this world? Says it all.
(I found this article today when I read the following diary: http://www.dailykos.com/... by Annrose. (I encourage you to read Annrose's very worthwhile diary and follow all the links)
PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW. PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW THE FULL MEASURE OF THIS MAN.
5:48 PM PT: UPDATE:
Thank you for the many very thoughtful comments in this diary.
To be clear. I do not judge how the Santorum parents worked out their grief. What is shocking for me is how they expected their children to follow their own forms.
I witnessed something very similar to this when a family forced many young children to attend to the bedside of a dying grandparent; forcing them for literally days to be present, so that they wouldn't miss the time of death. Most of these children did not want to be there, were sick to their stomachs about being there and were formulating nightmares about being there. They were being traumatized by trying to please their parents. They didn't have a choice.
I doubt that the Santorum children had choice either.
Children are separate beings from their parents and have their own feelings about life. Some children are scared by clowns, some laugh at them. In such traumatic situations everyone is in a state of shock and the children don't truly have the capacity to say 'no.' Children are not just extensions of their parents and must be treated with the respect that they deserve.
What Santorum did, imo, was impose his grieving process and rituals on his children and I think that that was abusive.
6:23 PM PT: H/T MsMacgyver:
"Yes, and there's more...
DK Diary Title: Karen Santorum Cohabitated with an Abortion Doctor NOW She's Married to an Anti-Abortionist - Aargh!?
http://www.dailykos.com/....
“When she met Rick, Karen was living with Tom Allen, an OBGYN who in the early 1970s cofounded Pittsburgh’s first abortion clinic. It was a somewhat unusual pairing. Allen was the doctor who delivered Karen. She began living with him while an undergraduate nursing student at Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University. She was in her early 20s, he was in his 60s…..‘When she moved out to go be with Rick, she told me I’d like him, that he was pro-choice’ said Allen.’”
Diary linked to in this post is the same diary I link above by AnnRose. Definitely worth the read!
6:32 PM PT: Again, H/T to MsMacgyver:
Yes, it is a Diary worth reading (1+ / 0-)
(by annrose) not only for the information but also for her conclusion:
The stockpile of hypocrisy here (and with all the GOP candidates) on abortion and other social issues is stunning. I continue to be amazed at the disconnect between how they have lived their lives and the unreal expectations they demand in everyone else. Nobody is perfect, but this particular brand of moral hypocrisy threatens to undermine the entire fabric of our society. If they don't have room for personal choices on all levels for other people, then how can they reconcile their past?
Wed Jan 11, 2012 at 8:04 AM PT: UPDATE:
Here is one fact which I should have included in the diary. The ages of the children:
"After Gabriel died, Karen Santorum also found herself mired in sadness, as she tried to keep life as normal as possible for her other three children, Elizabeth, now 7, Johnny, 5, and Daniel, 3."
(source: http://www.post-gazette.com/...) H/T msmacgyver for link)
It is my point of view that children that young need to have a choice and utmost sensitivity needs to be made for their comfort level. I stand for the rights of the children.
That said there are many very emotional comments in this thread that I deeply respect, even though I may see things differently. My deep condolences to those for whom this topic is personal and I thank all for sharing their experiences and points of views.