Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum reminded abortion opponents of two separate Supreme Court cases on partial-birth abortion bans as he talked about the high court's recent decision legalizing gay marriage nationwide.
In 2000, the justice struck down a Nebraska ban on partial birth abortion. Then a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, Santorum said he fought efforts within the Republican Party to move on.
“We crafted a law and said the Supreme Court was wrong,” Santorum said to applause Friday at the National Right to Life Convention in New Orleans.
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
A federal ban that Santorum led the way on was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003 and then upheld by the high court in 2007.
“When did it become the law of the land because the Supreme Court had the final say on everything?” Santorum said.
“The Supreme Court doesn’t have the final say on everything. The American people have the final say on everything,” he added to a rousing ovation.
Santorum was the runner-up to eventual Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, winning 11 states. However, in this election cycle, he is not performing strongly in most polls ahead of the early-voting states.
Santorum told the crowd that 2016 “is not a time for the faint of heart” because the nation is undergoing sweeping social change.
Santorum admitted that in his early years in Congress, he never talked about abortion, until finding out about the so-called partial birth abortion issue in the late 1990s. He became a leader on the issue, sponsoring a bill to overturn President Bill Clinton’s veto of the federal ban. After he became a leader on the front lines of the abortion debate, he said, he was labeled by the media.
“My kids thought my first name was 'ultra',” he said, referring to “ultra-conservative” label.
“It’s one thing to be pro-life – being a governor and signing bills, being a senator and voting,” Santorum said. “If you stand up and fight, if you are identified as a leader on the issue, you pay a price.”
