Penn State graduate, former Pennsylvania senator, and 2012 Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum spoke to a group of about 50 students and community members about national security, the Biden administration, and abortion rights in the Willard building Monday night.

The College Republicans at Penn State hosted Santorum’s lecture, which lasted a little over two hours and included time for questions, answers, and banter between students and the senator. Santorum graduated from Penn State in 1980 with a degree in political science, helped found the university’s College Republicans chapter, and later earned a degree from Penn State’s Dickinson School of Law in 1986.

Santorum opened his speech by unpacking President Joe Biden’s national security plan in order to discuss the rights and wrongs, in his opinion, of Biden’s strategy and how their definitions of national security differ.

“A national security problem is a problem of a foreign entity doing things to harm the United States,” Santorum described. “Something external, foreign entity or entities, that would be an external threat to the country. That’s how most people would define national security. It’s not internal policy, it’s external policy.”

This definition contrasted President Biden’s outline of the United States’ current national security problems, which include the climate crisis, cyber and digital threats, and international economic disruptions to name a few. Santorum referred to Biden’s national security priorities as “misguided” and a “political statement,” rather than what he believes are legitimate, external problems that Americans face.

“You saw the Biden administration come in with a bunch of external threats that, in a word, are woke,” Santorum said. “They’re not real. Not that they aren’t problems. They’re just not real national security threats.”

Santorum moved on to discuss illegal immigration into the United States, especially from countries in Central and South America. He noted that Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton deported high quantities of illegal immigrants and President Biden isn’t approaching the same quotas as his predecessors.

“This administration has been pathetic when it comes to that…the disruptive effect of having all of those people in this country is profound,” Santorum said. “If only 1% of four million people are bad guys, that’s 40,000 people. 40,0000 drug-dealing, sex-trafficking, brutal, violent people.”

After about an hour of national security discussion, Santorum opened the floor to questions. He answered questions related to Idahoan border expansion, Brittney Griner, and the economy, but student probes regarding a woman’s right to an abortion resulted in the longest and most deliberate answers from Santorum.

One female student asked Santorum why she should vote for the senator if she has concerns and disagreements about his views on the right to an abortion. He responded with a question of his own and inquired why she would hope to vote for someone who has differing opinions on a topic the female student deemed important. He ultimately deflected the question and chalked things up to a disagreement.

“If you say ‘I’m OK with abortion on demand up until the moment of birth, and I’m OK with men training in women’s sports, and I’m OK with doing gender reassignment surgery at 13, and yet I believe those are all damaging and dangerous things for people and for our society and culture, and for the long term health of our country,’ I don’t think you should vote for me,” Santorum said. “Then I’m doing things to get your vote instead of doing things that I think are the right thing to do.”

Santorum shortly moved on from the topic of abortion to discuss closed mindedness between party lines, especially amongst young people.

“I hate to say it, your generation only hears one point of view,” Santorum stated. “If you think about it, in the popular culture, my point of view is considered to be homophonic, misogynistic, and paternalistic. ‘You’re a bigot, you’re racist, you’re homophobic, you’re misogynistic.’ I think I’ve been called those things pretty much every day of my life for the last 20 years, but are you listening to me? Are you actually understanding why I feel this way?”

Because of this, Santorum revisited the topic of abortion rights to explain why he feels the way that he does regarding the divisive topic.

“I’d rather lose your vote than know what I know and believe what I believe, and do something that is a violation of my conscience,” Santorum explained. “It’s not because I don’t want your vote, I’d love to have your vote, but there are certain things that are foundational [to me].”

While also being careful to exclude cases of rape or incest because “that’s the liberal argument,” Santorum outlined the influence of a woman’s choices to defend his stance on abortions to skeptical students in the audience.

“That mother consented to activity that caused that child and she knew it… What I’m saying is the sentence for that baby should not be death because you engaged in an activity that resulted in pregnancy,” Santorum said. “Life rights are more important than liberty rights.”

One male student and Santorum debated about when a life truly begins, whether that be in the womb or at birth, for nearly 20 minutes before College Republicans executives intervened and allowed Santorum to offer closing remarks.

“We all owe it to discern the truth and defend it,” Santorum remarked. “The problem is we’ve lost our hunger for truth. I think we’ve really lost our desire to really get to the nub of it. To me, our discussion was the nub of it.”