Santorum: I Voted to Fund a Program that Doesn’t Work and Harms Women

In this widely-cited video clip posted by Jennifer Rubin, Rick Santorum appears confused. It’s 2006 (i.e., before the Republican Party’s crusade to defund Planned Parenthood) and Santorum is running for reelection for his Senate seat.

At about 33 seconds in, Santorum says he has supported Title X, which funds family planning services for low-income women and is now targeted by his party’s crusade to “defund Planned Parenthood.” He says that he’s supported Title X because contraception is “not the taking of a human life.” (I’m guessing that if pressed on the contraception coverage debate today Santorum would go with the Bishops’ lie that some contraceptives are “abortifacients.”)

Rubin’s post has gotten a lot of attention because she zeroed in on Santorum’s comment that contraception is “harmful to women.” But note also what he says right before that: “I don’t think it works.”

So in the course of one minute, Santorum said he voted to fund contraception, even though he thinks it doesn’t work and is harmful to women. Genius!