Rick Santorum’s social-issues convictions have been his campaign’s bread and butter, but documents and interviews from his past show the former Republican senator was once a pro-abortion moderate.
During Santorum’s first run for office in 1990, his campaign issued a statement on abortion that was more moderate than other GOP candidates’. His position has changed since then. “Government must be on the side of human life,” Santorum now says. (RELATED: Full coverage of the Santorum campaign)
In a 1995 Philadelphia Magazine profile, Santorum agreed that he “was basically pro-choice all my life, until I ran for Congress. … But it had never been something I thought about.”
Asked why he was pro-life, he replied that he “sat down and read the literature. Scientific literature,” he then corrected himself, and noted “religion was a part of it too.”
“I honestly don’t remember ever discussing abortion with him,” the Huffington Post heard from one of Santorum’s law school classmates. “He and I had talks over lunch and we would talk military affairs. He was always for a strong defense. That was one point where we would come to agreement. That’s the only thing I really remember talking to him about.”
“Santorum is a product of the polarization of our politics,” Pat Ewing, a former campaign manager for Senator Harris Wofford, told HuffPo. “He has taken advantage of it. He understands it. And he will take a position to benefit himself to get a small group of people to love him adamantly. His personality hasn’t evolved, his politics has.”