‘My Child Was Not Stillborn!’: Rick Santorum Gets Heated With Bob Schieffer During Prenatal Testing Discussion

The Blaze – Sun, Feb 19, 2012

Rick Santorum clashed with CBS "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer Sunday, which included a tense exchange about the death of the GOP presidential candidate's infant son.

After asking Santorum about his comments regarding President Barack Obama's "theology," Schieffer seized on remarks Santorum had made about prenatal testing the day before.

"One of the mandates is they require free prenatal testing in every insurance policy in America," Santorum said during a campaign stop in Ohio Saturday. "Why? Because it saves money in health care. Why? Because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and therefore less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society."

Schieffer asked:"You sound like you're saying the purpose of prenatal care is to cause people to have abortions...I think any number of people would say that's not the purpose at all."

"The bottom line is that a lot of prenatal tests are done to identify deformities in utero and the customary procedure is to encourage abortion," Santorum said. Clarifying that he had only referred to prenatal testing, not prenatal care, added: "We’re talking about specifically prenatal testing and specifically amniocentesis, which is a -- which is a procedure that creates a risk of miscarriage when you have it and is done for the purposes of identifying maladies of a child in the womb, which in many cases, in fact, most cases, physicians recommend, particularly if there’s a problem, recommend abortion.”

He continued, getting increasingly passionate: "90 percent of Down Syndrome children in America are aborted. So to suggest where does that come from? I have a child who has Trisomy 18. Almost 100 percent of Trisomy 18 child are encouraged to be aborted. So I know what I'm talking about here."

"I know you know what you're talking about, I know that well, I know you also had another child that was stillborn," Schieffer said.

" -- no he was not stillborn, hold on Bob, whoa whoa whoa," Santorum said.

"Just a minute, just a minute," Schieffer said, "Didn't you want to know -- "

"Just hold on," Santorum interjected. "My child was not stillborn -- my child was born alive. He lived two hours and by the way, prenatal testing was done, we had a sonogram, they detected a problem and yes, the doctor said you should consider an abortion. This is typical Bob. This is what goes on in medical rooms around the country. Prenatal testing, amniocentesis, does in fact result more often than not result in abortion."

Schieffer, first acknowledging that Santorum was "absolutely right" about his son, asked Santorum whether he was advocating to "turn our back on science?"

Santorum said no, but he disagreed with a government mandate.

"People have the right to do it but to have the government force people to provide it free just to me has -- is a bit loaded," he said.

The death of Santorum's infant son has been raised before during the campaign: Fox News' Alan Colmes apologized after saying the former Pennsylvania senator and his wife took the body of the two-hour-old baby home and "played with it."

Watch below, via Mediaite: