Will Rick Santorum's abortion stance cripple his campaign?

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last updated 8 January 2015

The video: Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum put his conservative credentials on display during a Sunday appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, out-hardlining many of his rivals by restating his long-held belief that abortion should be banned, even in cases of rape and incest. (See the video below.) The former Pennsylvania senator also said that doctors who perform abortions should face criminal charges. "I believe that life should be protected at the moment it is a human life," Santorum said. "And at conception it is biologically human, and it's alive... it should be a person under the Constitution."

The reaction: Santorum is going to scare people with his "stunningly maximalist positions on abortion," says Rosie Gray at ThinkProgress. Everybody knows about his "over-the-top conservatism," but he's now staked out a "totally untenable" position that's even "at odds with the Supreme Court's most conservative members." I don't find it untenable, says Mary Kochan at Catholic Lane. If anything, Santorum should be more forceful. Abortion is "the number one make or break issue for any candidate," and Santorum should pull no punches when saying that a fetus is a "separate human person." Watch the video: