Dr Tom Allen Reveals Karen Santorum As A Daddy's Girl, Calculating Woman Hypocrite
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Karen Garver and Dr Tom AllenA Daily Beast eye opener Before Karen Met Rick is a jaw-dropper. We know that the GOP contender’s wife is opposed to birth control as well as abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. Mrs. Santorum — who herself survived a health emergency, receiving treatment most call a form of abortion but she insists was a natural delivery in the hospital of a 20-week old fetus that lived two hours, with no help from doctors or drugs (ahem) — has a new revelation.
Karen Garver Santorum lived through most of her 20s in a five-six year relationship with Tom Allen, a Pittsburgh obstetrician and abortion provider 40 years older than she.
The young woman’s father was a pediatrician and many of his patients were referred to him by Allen. Karen Garver left Tom Allen after meeting new love Rick Santorum. Karen apparently changed career courses from nursing to pursue her future as a lawyer. Garver met her future husband as an intern at Rick Santorum’s law firm.
Karen Garver Santorum, who left her six-year relationship with Dr Tom Allen after meeting Rick Santorum.Before changing gears, here please note that Rick Santorum said in 1997, that of course he would have chosen to save his wife’s life. Today he condemns her to death and their other children motherless — and Karen agrees.
“The doctors said they were talking about a matter of hours or a day or two before risking sepsis and both of them might die,” Santorum said. “Obviously, if it was a choice of whether both Karen and the child are going to die or just the child is going to die, I mean it’s a pretty easy call.”
Both Rick Santorum and his wife Karen are virulently opposed to any exceptions in the abortion debate, believing that birth control is also form of abortion. Believers in home schooling, it seems fare to say that the Santorums espouse a very traditional view of relations between men and women, even if Karen had a rather progressive beginning as a young adult woman.
Karen Santorum Lived for Several Years with National Leader in Safe Abortions
In fact, Dr Allen delivered Mrs. Santorum, born Karen Garver, in 1960. Karen Santorum’s six-year-long May-December affair began when she was 22 and a nursing student at Duquesne University and Allen was 63 and founder of the Magee-Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh.
Dr Allen’s enjoyment of much younger women was well known and the reason for his first divorce. Karen Garver called Allen for advice on an apartment near Duquesne University and moved into a basement apartment close by Allen’s two-floor apartment.
Recalling the day they began their relationship the Daily Mail picks up the story:
‘That first night, as soon as it got dark, she called to say she was scared and asked if she could come up.
‘I figured it was a come-on, but that was OK’.
During her relationship with Dr Allen, Karen Garver saw the world with several European holidays, as well as a trip to Hong Kong. Her partner bought her a grand piano and paid to have her teeth straightened. That’s a pretty sweet situation.
Six Degrees of Separation
Reading the Beast story, I shook my head over the details of Karen Santorum’s relationship with Dr Allen and his clinic, traveling back in time to my own Karen Garver years.
I revealed at the height of the healthcare debate — infuriated that Bart Stupak stood on the steps on Congress and called women ‘incubators’ while the Vatican’s representatives camped out in Nancy Pelosi’s office dictating the terms of the healthcare bill — that I donated my time to the Clergy Consultation Service, a group of 26 ministers and a rabbi, who became more than a thousand clergymen of every faith in America, pre Roe v. Wade Supreme Court Decision.
In response to reality in the late 1960s, a few Catholic priests but mostly Episcopalian, Presbyterian and Methodist clergy actually transported pregnant women across state lines, organizing abortions by doctors willing to perform them. Both the woman and her doctor were much more unlikely to get arrested, once she crossed state lines.
Our first choice of where to send women in New York was Dr Allen’s clinic in Pittsburgh, which was closer and far less expensive than our second alternative in Puerto Rico. I became involved after reading about the Clergy Consultation Service, a group of religious men standing against coat hanger abortions. As much as I respected their work in dealing with women’s reproductive health crises, they couldn’t possibly understand what it meant to be a woman with an unwanted pregnancy.
Working with a Presbyterian minister, I had the job of calling family members — especially unmarried aunts with a good income — asking them to support financially their nieces, so they could visit Dr Allen’s clinic. I also spoke to the girls privately after they met with our minister who discussed their options — including adoption — as a pregnant teenager. We assumed that there were questions that could only be answered by another female.
Karen Santorum | Man’s Woman
To read that Karen Santorum — a leader of the movement to take away birth control for American women — was living with Dr Allen, when my life track was to work with pregnant teenagers, the Clergy Consultation Service and Dr Allen’s Pittsburgh women’s health clinic leaves me speechless.
It seems that Karen Santorum is a woman of extremes. Choosing to live with a man 40 years your senior is highly unusual. Dr Allen was old enough to be her grandfather, not only her father. It is equally extreme in 2012, to believe that women should lose our right to birth control.
Much has been said that feminism condemned women like Karen Santorum who so enjoy family life and having many children. I’m so accustomed to defending myself against charges that are blatantly false about feminism — that we condemned motherhood, when we only wanted motherhood to be a choice; that we turned up our noses at stay-at-home moms, when I never once was part of such a conversation ever in my life — that I finally can agree about what we did think of women like Karen Santorum.
We would have called her calculating, based on this new information unveiled by the Daily Beast. We would have scoffed at the transparency of any woman moving into a basement apartment two blocks away from Dr Allen and calling to say she was afraid of the dark. With her switch of careers, we would have asked if she was pursuing her dreams or looking for a rich husband.
One wonders if Santorum’s believes are molded by the men she’s bedding. This issue does represent a key gulf between feminist and submissive women, who mold themselves according to the desires of the man they’re dating. The desire to be ‘daddy’s girl’ never goes away for some women, no disrespect intended to great fathers.
The Karen Santorum revelation is just one more story about social conservatives unveiling the hypocrisy of their private lives. And while I do support the right and reality of both women and men evolving in their views, Karen Garver Santorum suddenly reads like one more example of a stridently-conservative person with an unsavoury past, when contrasted to her extreme principles.
For the woman who lived for over five years with one of the country’s foremost leaders in women’s reproductive health, a doctor 40 years her senior, to now seek to deny our young women birth control is — well, it’s frankly nauseating. I stand by my opinion of Karen Santorum and hope that one day soon women wake up about the hypocrisy of social conservatives before it’s too late.
For further reading I share other AOC social conservatives hypocrisy stories. Anne
More Social Conservatives Hyprocrisy
Defining ‘Evil Incarnate’
Bro. Dennis’ strongly-worded new 2Ps & a Pod Blog Post is not meant to suggest that he shares my view on every social issue; he does not. But one of the reasons we get along so well, is that we both condemn extreme fundamentalism and hypocrisy on every front.
In all honesty, Bro. Dennis’ most recent post blew me out of the water:
Common to the demonstrative Ultra-Orthodox Jew, extremist Muslim, fundamentalist Christian and any other fanatical religious or secular institutions, is their outstanding aptitude in being manipulative, controlling and coercive. If this conduct prevents the emotional, spiritual or physical growth and development of another person, we have the definition of evil incarnate, according the Dr. Scott Peck in his book, ‘Children of the Lie’.
Bro. Dennis on Ultra-Orthodox, Fundamentalist, Extreme Moralists as ‘Evil Incarnate’ | 2Ps in a Pod AOC Body
Family Research Council, Fall of Man and George Rekers
Might this new relevation about Karen Santorum influence whether or not a prominent group of evangelical leaders does recount the votes in last weekend’s big social conservatives powwow in Texas? Last night, there was confusion around demands from Newt Gingrich’s supporters that a recount of last weekend’s vote be held. Evangelical conservative activists are headed to South Carolina to champion Rick Santorum’s campaign.
The Texas consensus — which is now in dispute — was announced by Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council. We can’t hear the word Family Research Council without thinking of George Rekers, a cofounder of the organization and a prominent ‘authority’ on homosexuality who led the crusade against gay adoptions.
It’s worth noting that what progressive, thinking people call hypocrisy, social conservatives call the fallen nature of all people.
This is why they don’t struggle with thrice-married Newt Gingrich — supported by Tony Perkins — or all the extramarital shennigans at K Street in Washington, where the nation’s not-so-pious pious political leaders pray regularly for redemption and guidance out of their sins. As long as one is on his knees at prayer time, a man is in good standing with the social conservatives boys club.
This sounds like a Monopoly game ‘Get Out of Jail’ card to me.
Queried in 2010 about the George Rekers allegations, Tony Perkins said:
“While we are extremely disappointed when any Christian leader engages in the very activities that they ‘preach’ against, it is not surprising,” he continued. “The Scriptures clearly teach the fallen nature of all people. We each have a choice to act upon that nature or accept the forgiveness offered by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and do our best to ensure our actions, both public and private match our professed positions.”
Rachel Maddow’s Blistering Verbal Spanking of George Rekers AOC Sexual Politics
Relentless Pursuit of Pornographers
Many of us find the ultimate hypocrisy to be the relentless attack on free speech by social conservatives who oppose pornography. Note that AOC isn’t thrilled with pornography either, but we support the Supreme Court decision on free speech. There’s very little that’s legal that can be done to stop the proliferation of pornography in our Internet-driven world.
What we find galling about social conservatives is that they consume the most pornography, and they pay for it, too. What is the day of the week they watch the most porn? Without dispute, it’s Sunday.
Statistics Say Conservatives Buy More Porn AOC Sensual Rebel
Karen Santorum’s Impure Youth XX factor Slate
This entire story reveals why the collapse between personal belief and policy advocacy is making this country collectively stupider by the minute. The defense of the Santorums in light of Karen’s past as the lover of an abortion provider is to brush it off and say people’s beliefs change. And sure, she has every right to feel that her past was a mistake and to seek forgiveness from her God for her fornicating ways. The problem, of course, is that Karen and Rick Santorum want to take away the rights of others to do as they did and seek their own paths. They have every right to preach their religious dogma wherever they want. The problem is that Santorum continues to advocate for writing his and his wife’s strange religious beliefs into law, even as they themselves weren’t prepared as young people to pay the legal consequences for not adhering to their particular faith. It’s a shame that such a fuss is being made over Karen Santorum’s past. In a sane world, we’d be allowed to have our private lives be private. But since the Santorums want to strip you of your right to sexual privacy in order to have the government micromanage your sex lives, it’s high time she be held to the standard she wants for you. After all, she’s benefitted long enough from the freedoms that she and her husband want to take away from everyone else.
Rick Santorum seen as diligent, dedicated Des Moines Register
In a generally supportive and praiseworthy article about Santorum, we learn another bit of hypocrisy about how they work the system, while condemning the rest of us:
Santorum has also been criticized for advocating legal reforms in medical malpractice lawsuits. His wife, Karen, filed a $500,000 lawsuit against a Virginia chiropractor that resulted in a $175,000 judgment in 1999 for permanent back pain.
“He thinks the system is good enough for his family, but not for the rest of us,” said Andrew Mertens, communications director for the Iowa Association for Justice, a trial lawyers group.
Santorum talked of his interest in tort reform at a Centerville town hall meeting last month. He said in an interview that his wife’s lawsuit was consistent with reforms he has sought.
“There needs to be a medical malpractice system. I just think there need to be reasonable constraints in order for there to be proper incentives for everybody in the system to bring costs under control and to provide quality care,” he said.
Years ago when I was an executive at Victoria’s Secret, I was dropped in a leadership, trust-building accident that was so stupid that the exercise was never again performed. Indeed, the president and CFO joined hands, and I was to fall back, trusting that they would catch me. Well, they didn’t catch me and I crashed to the floor, ending up in the emergency room with a dislocated shoulder. For a good two years I had terrible pain and loss of mobility in the shoulder until it was treated by an Eastern medicine practioner and cured.
Did it ever occur to me to sue Victoria’s Secret in what was a case of total negligence? No. But here we read that once again the Santorums have lived the very life they condemn in others. This story is getting more nauseating by the moment.
Last night, we had a huge discussion on my Facebook page, with my dear Republican conservative friend trying to defend this article sent from a Muslim professor friend of mine in Egypt:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/17/402438/santorum-staffer-says-women-shouldnt-be-president-because-its-against-gods-will/
AOC has done plenty of stories on this topic, so I know it to be true. But my dear friend’s response was to say that it was a private email and not our concern. Wrong!!! The Santorums are dangerous and phony, cashing in with God’s name while telling the rest of us how immoral we are. Pennsyvania voters KNOW these facts loud and clear.
