the people of alaska. i remember being so proud of you for saying, directly to the president what your obligations were. that s the way i feel, too. the people of maine don t expect me to be a rubber stamp. you are both opposed to cuts to planned parenthood because of what it means in your states. if you were male senators, do you think it would be such a priority for you to make sure planned parenthood is not cut? that s a really good question. the issue of family planning services, cancer screening, well women care probably does resinate with us more than with our male colleagues and to me, it was so unfair to single out one medicaid provider and say to
able so far to provide her kid. and those kids, she says, are dying. she confronts mr. santorum with this. mr. santorum scoffs at her. literally scoffs at her question, laughs at it and then proceeds to make an example out of her for the audience. it is kind of hard to hear her here, but here is that exchange. these kids in the hospital in the on call ward dying because they can t afford the same treatments. here s the this is the point she s making. these drugs are really expensive and therefore we should not make drug companies charge that. he s alive today because drug companies thought that they would make money and in providing that care and if the drug company didn t think they could make any money, for providing that care, i hate to put it in these terms, but that drug wouldn t be here. people have no problem going out and buying their ipads for $900, but $200 for a drug, got a problem with that? what was just posed to the candidate by the mother of a sick child is the p
care. mr. santorum laughs at her, and then tells her that drug companies ought to be able to charge whatever they want. that was his response on the faith, family and freedom tour. joining us now is washington post columnist, msnbc contributor and senior fellow at the brookings institute, mr. e.j. dien who writes about religion and politics with alarming a lackry ty. did you happen did you happen to see any of that santorum exchange? i wanted to leave the show with it tonight because i didn t feel like it was it was made widely available today, maybe because nothing rick santorum ask does is seen as being that newsworthy. i thought it was newsworthy. did you see it as something that would be important? yeah, i think that you put that together with obama s speech today and santorum s funny because there are times when he has used this christian scripture in the same way that obama did in a case to make for why we must do things for the poor.
and i m hearing that outrage from everybody including my own daughters. is it striking to you, though, after this year of just decimating attacks on planned parenthood, not only in state legislatures, but in congress, it becoming a real priority for congress? they were going to republicans in the house were going to shut down the federal government over their efforts to defund planned parenthood, after all of these attacks, this seems to be the one that is really grabbed everybody s attention? i got to tell you, i ve been shaking my head because because you would attack an organization, 97% of what they do is well woman care. and i think what you have here is you have a juxtaposition of women across america who have used planned parenthood for their breast cancer screening, for their cervical cancer screening, for their well woman visits and then you have the susan g. komen foundation which everybody has supported because they are opposing breast cancer.