Rick Santorum Quotes

We need to respect choices that women make.

Life's tricky for women because they have to make more choices than men. And yes, choice is good, but boy, you better be an expert choice-maker.

Contraceptives unlock one of the most dormant but potentially powerful assets in development: women as decision makers.

Abortion needs to be claimed as a positive, social good. It is an essential option for women—not just ones in dramatic, terrible, body-and-soul-destroying situations, but all women—and thus benefits society as a whole.

Everyone will be happier if fewer women are tied to abusive men, drop out of school, and live impoverished lives because of a random pregnancy.

I am the result of the good choices I've made and the bad choices.

My goal is to give young girls confidence in this world so they can be more like men in the decision-making process.

There is no question in the world that educating a girl is good for her country and good for her. The challenge is, is it good for her parents who are living in extreme poverty, who need the girl's help to take care of getting firewood, water, taking care of young children?

I was raised in that generation where it was all 'Women can have it all!' and I don't think you can. I think something falls off the table. The good thing is that the things that stay on the table become so much more important.

Population growth is straining the Earth's resources to the breaking point, and educating girls is the single most important factor in stabilizing that. That, plus helping women gain political and economic power and safeguarding their reproductive rights.

I'm never not going to be interested in young girls who are struggling in poor places.

I think of Oprah as a Mother Joseph wannabe, a daytime oracle rewarding the good and punishing the bad.

To put it mildly, I'm not crazy about the implication that pregnant women are incapable of deciding for themselves.

Contraception doesn't define a woman.

Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

When the poor know that their children will survive, when they educate their daughters, when they access family planning, they have fewer children.

Leadership consists of picking good men and helping them do their best.

Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.

A girl child who is even a little bit educated is more conscious of family planning, health care and, in turn, her children's own education.

It's just, for me, the natural standard: a woman should be able to decide over her own body.

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

Liberating women from repeated childbirth can liberate them from poverty as well.

No public official, no congressman, has the right to tell a woman what decision she must make and no congressman has the wisdom to dictate what is best for her.

… the lack of access to basic family planning services and information undermines a woman’s ability to determine her own destiny. It also increases illness and mortality rates of women and their children, and inhibits the ability of families to climb out of poverty.

Your action means that the U.S. government will control what non-governmental recipients of U.S. international family planning assistance do and say with their own funds. You have imposed on the poorest women of the world a halt to information that women in the United States are guaranteed.