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Santorum daughter admitted to hospital

The three-year-old daughter of Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has been admitted to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the candidate has cancelled his Sunday morning campaign events to be at her side.

The three-year-old daughter of Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has been admitted to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the candidate has cancelled his Sunday morning campaign events to be at her side.

Santorum campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley said Saturday night that the former Pennsylvania senator and his wife, Karen, were with Bella at CHOP. Gidley said Santorum planned to return to campaigning as soon as possible in Florida, where the Republican primary is Tuesday.

Bella Santorum has Trisomy 18, a genetic condition in which a child has a third copy of material from chromosome 18, instead of the usual two, causing a wide array of physical and mental problems.

Bella was not expected to survive until her first birthday - half of infants with Trisomy 18 do not survive their first week, according the National Institutes of Health. Some children have lived to their teenage years, but with significant medical and developmental issues.

The Santorums have been frequent visitors to CHOP with their daughter, and concerns over Isabella's health have canceled previous Santorum campaign events.

During his campaign, Santorum and his wife have spoken openly about the challenges and rewards of raising a child with such a condition.

The Santorums have six other children; they lost a baby boy, Gabriel, shortly after his birth in 1996. Bella was born in 2008; two years later, Santorum wrote about her in an Inquirer column.

"All children are a gift that comes with no guarantees," he wrote. "While Bella's life may not be long, and though she requires our constant care, she is worth every tear."

Bella, whose full name is Isabella Maria Santorum, has become a symbol of his pro-life stance, as he claimed that most infants diagnosed in the womb with Trisomy 18 are aborted.

"I have a little girl who's 3 1/2 years old," he told Christian conservatives in Iowa before winning that lead-off contest.

"I don't know whether her life is going to be measured - it's always been measured - in days and weeks. Yet here I am. . .because I feel like I wouldn't be a good dad if I wasn't out here fighting for a country that would see the dignity in her and every other child."

When voters ask him about her, he calls the decision to campaign "gut-retching" but says he goes forward for all special needs families.

"You think she's fine, and then one cold and she's this close to dying," he told The Washington Post last year in an interview.

In October, he missed one of Bella's surgeries to participate in a debate, and told the audience that he planned to take an all-night flight home from Las Vegas to be with her.

"I look at the simplicity and love she emits," Santorum said in a web video his campaign released after his scheduling drew questions, "and it's clear to me we're the disabled ones."

Santorum largely has kept his daughter off the campaign schedules, preferring her to stay home with her mother. But Bella did join

Santorum for a few days around Iowa's straw poll in August, and she joined her family in Charleston, S.C., the day of its primary. She didn't join her six siblings for the public speech. She stayed backstage.

Santorum had been scheduled to appear on NBC's "Meet the Press" and to attend church in Miami. He was in the Philadelphia area as recently as Friday night to attend a campaign fundraiser in Chester County.