I was blown away by something that happened during Saturday's GOP presidential debate/hate-the-gays-a-thon—and it wasn't anything that was said about the gays or our secret plan to RUIN EVERYTHING FOR EVERYONE EVERYWHERE.

When the candidates were asked to share a story about an event that shaped their worldview, their faith, their relationship to Jeebus, etc., Santorum and Gingrich both told stories about children—Santorum about one of his own, Gingrich about a friend's—who were born with life-threatening medical problems. The lives of both children were thanks to extraordinary medical interventions: weeks in neonatal ICUs, round-the-clock care, heart transplants, multiple brain surgeries. These events, both men said, both illustrated and cemented their commitment to life: these children could've died at birth—doctors in Santorum's case had all but declared the child dead and, according to Santorum, coldly advised him and his wife to "accept the inevitable" death of their newborn—but these children deserved a chance at life, by God, even if meant defying doctors and the odds and conventional medical wisdom. (Is someone trying to find these doctors that Rick Santorum has cast as the villains in his morality tale? It might be interesting to hear their side of the story.)

Santorum and Gingrich pledged that, should either be elected president, no child would ever be denied a shot at life. They would both put an end to the Obama administration's practice of taking sick infants out of incubators and tossing them out windows. Because life is sacred and precious... and no medical intervention or treatment should ever be denied a child, no matter how long the odds, because LIFE! And that's what it means to be pro-life. Cue rapturous applause from the audience.

Okay, great. I actually agree with the proposition that all children should have access to the kind of medical care that Santorum's child did. (Medical care that was paid for by the federal government, BTW.) But both of these douchebags are pledging to repeal Obamacare. Both oppose "socialized medicine." (For your family, not for theirs.) Both men would regard the creation of a single-payer health care system—like the one they have up in Canada—as an unacceptable socialist assault on freeeeeeeeeeeedom. And both men stood silent when audience members at a previous GOP debate cheered for letting a man without health insurance die. Because this is America, where letting children die of toothaches is one of prices we pay for freedom.

Could someone—a journalist maybe?—ask these two pieces of smugassshit how they can assert that no child should ever be denied access to medical care while at the same time opposing any effort to make sure that all children have access to medical care? If being pro-life means being pro-access-to-medical-care, how can they describe themselves as pro-life? Or are they only pro-life when it comes to their own children and those of their close friends?