Former Senator and Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has canceled a trip to Iowa after being hospitalized for dehydration and gastrointestinal illness over the weekend, according to The Hill.
Santorum was scheduled to give the keynote address at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition's Annual Spring Kickoff on Monday.
He was planning to address how the Republican party should continue to focus on both social and economic issues and "what must be done to ensure our party's future viability." He was also scheduled to attend a luncheon for the John Paul II Medical Research Institute on ethical issues in biomedical research, according to a press release.
"While traveling in South Carolina on Saturday, Rick Santorum became ill and was admitted to the hospital for a gastrointestinal illness and dehydration," Virginia Davis, a spokesperson for Santorum's political action committee Patriot Voices, said in a statement. "He is feeling better today but remains in the hospital."
"He is expected to resume a full schedule later this week and looks forward to returning to Iowa soon," she said.
Santorum ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, where he won the Iowa caucuses in January, though came in second to eventual candidate Mitt Romney in the overall primary process. His scheduled return to Iowa has caused speculation that he is planning another run for president.
"I'm certainly leaving the door open for that," Santorum told "Newsmax" earlier this month. "I'm making no commitments at this point, but we're not doing anything inconsistent with running in 2016."
Santorum was elected to the U.S. Senate for Pennsylvania in 1994. He served two terms before losing his re-election bid in 2006. He is known for his conservative views, particularly his opposition to gay marriage and birth control.
"I think you'll see, hopefully, a chastened Supreme Court is not going to make the same mistake in the [current] cases as they did in Roe v. Wade," Santorum told the Des Moines Register recently. "I'm hopeful the Supreme Court learned its lesson about trying to predict where the American public is going on issues and trying to find rights in the Constitution that sit with the fancy of the day."
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