The top donor behind a pro-Rick Santorum super-PAC said Thursday that contraception doesn't have to be costly because women used to use aspirin for birth control.
"This contraceptive thing, my gosh it's so inexpensive. You know back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraception," Foster Friess, the major donor behind the pro-Santorum Red White and Blue Fund super-PAC said on MSNBC. "The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn't that costly."
Friess was referencing an old saying that women who held their knees closely together would have to remain abstinent.
Santorum strongly criticized the Obama administration's rule requiring insurance companies — including for certain religious organizations — to provide birth control for those organizations' employees.
Santorum has said that although he thinks women should have access to contraception, it was not necessary for the government to subsidize it or provide it in any way. He has also said that sex should primarily be about reproduction.
"They are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal and unitive but also procreative," Santorum said in 2011. "And if you can take one part out that's not for purposes of procreation, that's not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why can't you take other parts out."
