One of the first truths we learn from Scripture is that every human being is made in the image of God. That truth is foundational to our stand for life. Every person, born and unborn, possesses inherent dignity and worth, and our defense of life bears witness to the truth of the Gospel.
Yet defending life comes at a cost, and sometimes it can feel as though our efforts make little difference. At the 2026 Pennsylvania March for Life, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum shared a deeply personal message about what can happen when we faithfully answer God’s call, stand courageously for life, and trust Him with the results.
Our President, Michael Geer, welcomed Sen. Santorum to the stage to thunderous applause from the thousands gathered on the Capitol grounds. Here is a transcript of the Senator’s remarks, lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Thank you, Michael. Thank you so much! And thank you to the Pennsylvania Family Institute and the March for Life. It’s an honor to be here, but most of all, I want to thank you.
Every time I get an opportunity to come and speak to the people of Pennsylvania, I just want to thank you. You may think, “Well, he’s thanking us for electing him to the Senate.” Yes, but more importantly, thank you for giving me the opportunity to experience something that changed my life. You notice when Mike talked, he said [I] was one of the great, fearless leaders in the United States Senate.
But I served two terms in the House before I became a United States Senator, and Mike didn’t mention my fearless leadership there for a reason, because it wasn’t. I was like most folks who are pro-life, which is the easy road, which is to vote pro-life and keep your mouth shut. To vote pro-life and never ever author a bill, never champion a cause.
What I found, out and most politicians know, is that if you just vote pro-life and don’t really try to win, they’re going to leave you alone. It’s when you stick your head out of the foxhole that they come after you. And that’s who I was until I came to the United States Senate thanks to you.
My Life Changed
And in the United States Senate, my life changed because of two things. Number one, someone had the courage to come up to me and invite me to a Bible study in the United States Senate. And my wife found a church, our church in Northern Virginia, when we moved our family there, with an amazing priest who rocked my world.
And over a period of a year, that first year in 1995, I went from having Christ in my faith as part of my life to the center of my life, to my reason for being here. And it’s amazing what happens when you put Christ in the middle of your life, when you seek His will, and when you get close enough to God, because I think God speaks in whispers. And when you’re close enough to Him, you can actually hear what He’s calling you to do.
And at the very time that was going on, this bill called Partial Birth Abortion was up for an override vote in the United States Senate in 1996. And the man who was leading that charge backed away. He didn’t want to do it anymore because he was getting too much heat, and he was up for election.
The Lord Lifted My Hand Up
And so, the leader of the Republican Party went to our caucus and said, “Are any of you willing to do it?” No one raised their hands. No one. And there I sat as one of those no ones.
And I don’t know what came over me, but the Lord lifted my hand up. And one of the things I found in my life is when the Lord presents an opportunity, don’t think, just say yes.
I embarked on something that I had never intended. In fact, I swore that I would never do [it]. Which is to speak out and be a leader on the issue of life. And the reason I share that with you is that I was not someone who wanted to do that. I was not someone who was convicted of doing it. I was not someone who was raised to do it. But someone who ran into it because I ran into the Lord. And my message today is actually a pretty simple one.
And one of the things I found in my life is when the Lord presents an opportunity, don’t think, just say yes. ~ Sen Santorum
I’m going to tell you a couple of stories. But…I can list all the things and the work that I did on life. But the reality is God. Did I lose races because of my position? Did I get beat-up by the media? Have I been vilified in every possible corner? Yes. Praise God.
I love the Beatitudes because there’s all sorts of charisms in the Beatitude. Peacemakers, and meek and humble of heart.
Pick Up Your Cross
But there are two Beatitudes. For people who stand up for righteousness’ sake and those who are willing to be persecuted for the Lord. Two.
And when you stand for life, you check both of those boxes. So what I want to tell you is that yes, you will suffer a lot. But remember, the Lord said? What? He didn’t say pick up your box of chocolates. He didn’t say pick up your Volvo. He said pick up your cross. And that’s where He will bless you.
I want to share with you just a couple of stories of how the Lord has blessed me. And let me assure you that if you embrace the cross of life in a world that is not for life, in a world that says just think about you not others, He will bless you beyond measure. And I say that particularly to the legislators, to the clergy, who sometimes may get hesitant in both jobs to speak out and to be bold and to take the criticism and maybe the losses that come with it. I’ll share one story that happened to me.
You May Have Lost the Vote, But You Saved the Life of My Child
You may have heard it when I was a United States Senator. This was in 1998. This was the second time we tried to overturn President Clinton’s veto.
And I was debating Barbara Boxer on the floor of the United States Senate for about six hours. I always say I deserve some time off in purgatory for that. And after six hours, we were exhausted.
We had done some amazing things, and we were sitting there ready to shut down the Senate. The vote was the next morning. And I just got this sense that I needed to say more.
We were two votes short, and I thought maybe, just maybe, if I get up and talk tonight, maybe there’s a couple of Senators who went home and turned C-SPAN on, and I might be able to reach them. I went back to the cloakroom and called my wife. We had four children at the time, including a newborn.
And it was eight o’clock at night and I said, “You know, honey, I just feel like I need to say more.” And I heard our littlest one crying in the background, and she said what she always says, which is “That’s what God’s calling you to do. That’s what you need to do.”
So I went back on the floor of the Senate, and I got up, and I talked. I said it’d just be a few minutes. [It was an hour and a half]. So the march is going to be delayed; just warning you right now. An hour and a half later, I finished. But during that time, I stood up because this had become a national story.
I mean, everyone was covering it. Not just in America, but around the world.
I was getting letters from all over the world because the principal reason for keeping partial birth abortion, and late term abortion, legal was to kill disabled children in the womb. To kill children whose mothers found out after they were pregnant and didn’t want the child they were carrying. They needed late term abortions because they couldn’t find out before.
Speaker after speaker got up and talked about how this was the compassionate thing to do for mother and child. But I stood up there with pictures of people who wrote to me who had spina bifida or who had other conditions that were identified.
Trisomy 21, Down syndrome. Trisomy 18, Edwards syndrome. All these birth defects.
And they sent me pictures, and I told their stories. That these are lives worth living. I poured it all out. I felt amazingly that God was with me that night. And I got home about 10.30 at night.
My wife was asleep. My kids were asleep. I got up at 5.30 which was my routine.
Off back to work. Came to the vote. Full of hope.
But we lost by two votes. I remember walking out of that chamber, and I walked out just like you’d walk out of the front of the Capitol here. And right across is the Supreme Court building.
And I felt like a failure. Or as Donald Trump would say, a loser. I was a loser.
Not only did I lose the vote, but it was another night that I wasn’t home to hold my wife going to bed. To tuck my children in again. And I thought how prideful I must have been to think I could make a difference.
The devil will do that to you. Two days later, I got an email. My staff brought it to me.
It was from a young man from Michigan State University. And he said as follows.
“He said, ‘You may have lost the vote on the floor of the Senate, but you saved the life of my child.’”
“Last night, my girlfriend and I were sitting on the couch together and we were flipping through the channels, and we came across you standing next to a picture of a young man with disabilities. And so, we stopped to listen. And as we listened to you and your argument against partial birth abortion, I noticed that my girlfriend was crying. So I asked her, ‘What’s wrong?’ And she said, ‘I’m pregnant. And I have an abortion scheduled in two days. But I’m not going to have an abortion.'”
He said, “You may have lost the vote on the floor of the Senate, but you saved the life of my child.”
You Are Doing His Work
You will march today, and you may lose a vote in the Senate tomorrow. You will march today, and there will be another hundred abortions in Pennsylvania tomorrow. But remember this.
You’re doing what God has called you to do. You are doing His will. You are doing His work.
You are standing for His truth. And you see this. God sees this.
A Little Girl Named Bella
My second story. I lost my Senate race in 2006. And two years later, we had a little surprise; A little girl named Bella. When she was born, we didn’t know there was something wrong.
We didn’t know because we don’t believe in prenatal testing, because we’ll take whatever God gives us. Because every child is a blessing. And we found out she had a condition called Trisomy 18, and we were told that that condition is incompatible with life. That she will die soon. That she was lucky to be born alive. 90%+ are not. And those that are, die within the first few weeks.
She was sent home on hospice. We used to celebrate every week’s birthday and hope that there would be as many weeks of birthday as most people have years.
But she didn’t die. She continued to fight. And so, with her continuing to fight, I continued to fight.
Not just for life, but also for the disabled. It actually became the reason I ran for president in 2012 was because of what I thought the healthcare system was doing to people with disabilities. I spent my career fighting for life and fighting for the disabled.
I’m going to fast forward to just four years ago. Four years ago, I got a call from my daughter who had been trying unsuccessfully for years to have a child. And she said, I just got a call from a woman who was at mass in Annapolis, Maryland.
And the priest had got up and said that there was a woman in our community who is pregnant and is delivering in two weeks. And that the adoption had fallen through. And if there’s anybody who would be willing to adopt a child, the provision is that this child is going to have special needs.
It’s going to have probably some severe disability. This woman who knows of Bella called my daughter and said you’re exactly the kind of person who I know would do this. And she said, of course.
Within 24 hours, she was on a Zoom call with the mom. And for those of you who are Catholic out there, my daughter’s saint, the one she’s named her company after, the one she has a relic of, she’s just all in with is St. Thérèse of Lisieux. She got the call on October 1st, the feast day of St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
So, they get on the call, and she starts telling her story. She’s married. They were very excited to have another child until they found out that the child was disabled.
And her husband and her mom wanted her to abort. She was torn about it. And so she said, “I was in the middle of this decision when I pulled my phone, out of my pocket and I saw that it had butt dialed somebody.”
And I hear the voice and I pick it up and it’s a Catholic priest. She said, “I’m Catholic but I haven’t gone to church in years, and I haven’t seen this priest in forever, didn’t even know he was still in my contacts. Maybe I’m supposed to talk to you.”
So, she told him her story. He connected her with a crisis pregnancy center and the Sisters of Life. The sister who’s working with her is a woman by the name of Sister Mary Doolittle. And she… tells [Sister Mary] her story, and the sister says, “I have a book I want to send you. The book is called Bella’s Gift.”
It was a book that Karen and I wrote about our daughter, Bella. So, she sent this mom the book. And [my daughter] Elizabeth says to her, “Did you read the book?” She said, “I read the introduction and after reading the introduction, I decided not to have an abortion.”
Elizabeth said, “My mom and dad wrote the book because she knew that Elizabeth was our daughter. My mom and dad wrote the book, but I wrote the introduction.”
The mom replied, “I just want you to know I didn’t read the whole book but the book sits on my nightstand next to my bed and every night before I go to bed I look at that picture of your sister and I say a prayer that whoever adopts my little girl will love her as much as your parents loved Bella.”
And then my daughter asked, “That sister of life, could that have been Sister Mary Doolittle?” And the woman says, “Yes it was, how did you know?” She said, “Five months ago I was at a conference with Sister Mary Doolittle and she pulled me aside and said, ‘Elizabeth, I have this just feeling that the Lord has put upon me that you’re to pray for this woman in Annapolis, Maryland, and her daughter.’ Every day since then I have been praying for you and your daughter for the last five months.” So, our first grandchild is a little girl who was potentially going to be aborted and with disabilities.
You Think You Can Out-Give God
You think you can out give God, but God blessed me for my years of work on abortion and disabilities with a little girl that I can love the rest of my life that reminds me to thank the Lord.
Be fearless. Be courageous. Stand for life.
Not just because God is calling you, but because our country desperately needs that light, that witness to the dignity of all human life. And let me assure you, God will bless you.
You may not see it. You may not get the email, but God will bless this country for the work that you’re doing. God bless you.
The work of standing for life continues long after the March For Life ends.
Your prayers and financial support help Pennsylvania Family Institute defend the dignity of every human life, equip Pennsylvanians to speak up, and bring a principled, pro-life voice to our State Capitol throughout the year.
Through our Four-Fold Strategy of Impact, we work with policymakers in the Capitol, bring a pro-family perspective to the media, equip families and churches to make a difference in their communities, and defend fundamental freedoms in the courts through the Independence Law Center. Your partnership helps us engage on all four fronts as we stand for life, strengthen families, and protect religious freedom across Pennsylvania.
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