•  Campaign Videos (October 2011) « Rick Santorum for President
  

[Music] Rick Santorum: You don't get involved in running for something like this unless a couple of things are happening.  Number one you feel like you're called to do it, and I feel like to do that you've got to pray, you've got to examine, you know, whether this is you know what God wants you to do in your life.  People have asked me if I've been—over these last 18 months—whether I'm running.  And I always say I'm walking, and I'm walking because I'm trying to walk in the path that God's leading me in, and a big part of that is the responsibility you have as a husband and father.

Karen and I have been married 20 years, 20 wonderful years.  We've had eight children.  We've suffered some tragedies, we've lost a child, but we've had some great blessing; we're raising seven.

Karen and I have struggled in trying to discern whether God could possibly want us to do that, particularly in light of the fact that our youngest daughter, Isabella Maria—who we call Bella—is a very special girl who needs a lot of care. 

When she was born we knew something was wrong but we didn't know what it was, and it wasn't until five days later that they came back and told Karen and me that she had a disorder called Trisomy 18 which is similar to Down Syndrome.  We were told at the diagnosis that Bella's life expectancy was a matter of hours and days.  And so we felt blessed that we had Bella, and yet we were told by the medical community that why do anything, just let her go; you know she's not going to be able to do much, she's not going to be able to be like normal children, and so you should just let her go.

It angered us to hear that because she was our daughter like every other one of our children, and we were not going to let her go.  Now we understand that her life is going to be different than our other children, but we felt that we owed her the opportunity, a chance to do as well as she could.

And so when we brought her home, I remember right here in this room, a doctor came in and described how Bella was going to die and what we would do to help care for her as she died.  He left and Karen and I looked at each other and said we're going to not focus on her dying, we're going to focus on her living and we're going to do everything we can to help her.

Over the past few years she has been a wonderful, joyful center of the universe if you will for our family over the past three years and we just thank God every day we have her.  I always say Bella makes us better. 

Some people describe people like Bella as disabled, and I look at her, and I look at the joy and I look at the simplicity and the love that she emits and it's clear to me that we're the disabled ones, not her.  She's got it right.  She's got a great and beautiful spirit, one that emits unconditional love, and we can learn a lot from that.

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Notes: From the Oct. 27, 2011 press release:

Senator Santorum said: "During the last debate I mentioned how I was looking forward to taking the red-eye home to see my three year old daughter Bella, who had surgery earlier that day.  Following that debate, Karen and I got numerous emails and calls from supporters asking how she was doing.  We were so touched by the tremendous outpouring of support, the thoughts and the prayers we received for our sweet Bella.  She is doing great and back to her joyful, smiley self.  But since so many people were concerned, we wanted to share a little bit more about Bella and the great blessing she is for our entire family."

Copyright © 2011 Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action.