Tuesday, October 23, 2012
You're On Your Own, Mr. Mourdock
I'm not even going to try to defend it. If our Republican candidates want to make absurd, thoughtless comments affording no exceptions in cases of rape and incest, then they can fend for themselves in defending their asinine statements. In what was otherwise an excellent performance in tonight's debate, Richard Mourdock had to open up his mouth and say that a pregnancy that resulted from a rape was intended by God. Mourdock's post-debate statement hardly helps his cause. "God creates life, and that was my point," Mourdock stated. "God does not want rape, and by no means was I suggesting that He does. Rape is a horrible thing, and for anyone to twist my words otherwise is absurd and sick," stated Richard Mourdock. Nobody has to twist your words to find issue with what you said. Richard. Is all I have to say is that if your wife or daughter were raped and you expected her to carry that baby to full term, then you're just sick in my mind. I find the practice of abortion as a means of birth control abhorrent, but I find forced conception even more abhorrent. It's the economy, stupid. Why do you have to get sidetracked with these sideshows? Have you learned nothing over the past six months?
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14 comments:
I'm pro-life and find abortion abhorent. But it frustrates me to no end that many of my pro-life friends insist on giving away a popular position to spend political capital arguing against any exceptions (rape, incest, life of the mother). Those exceptions probably don't make up 1% of the abortions performed in this country. But yet they'd rather lose on the other 99% because they wont' budge on the other 1%. It is dumb, dumb, dumb.
It is logically inconsistent generally to forbid abortion but to allow it in the case of rape.
An unborn child of rape stands in the same moral footing as any other child.
I cannot speak to supernatural intervention, but congratulations to Mourdock for not admitting a fallacious argument.
Gotta disagree, Gary. Even children conceived in immoral or unlawful circumstances shouldn't be killed. The child is innocent and shouldn't suffer for the transgressions of his or her biological parents.
Mourdock probably just lost the election tonight. Horrible, horrible unforced error in what was already a close race.
Okay, Carlos. Suppose that creepy guy that recently got out of prison and raped the woman down in Greenwood had broken into your home instead and raped your wife and impregnated her. Are you going to say, I'm really sorry honey that you were raped, but you're going to have to give birth to this child anyway?
The last time I felt like this was during Watergate. What a way to lose an election!
I hope that he doesn’t drag down other Republicans, who are going to be forced to comment on this.
Thank you, Gary for taking issue with Mourdock. I find it very interesting that all those believing a woman who is forced to have sex should be forced to have any resulting children, are men. I suppose these same people believe that if God intentionally gives you a serious illness, you should not have the choice of receiving medical treatment.
Gary, I can understand the anguish that women (and men) feel in such a situation. The problem with killing the child is that he or she (along with the woman) is an innocent third party; the only culpable party is the rapist. The libertarian nonaggression principle would dictate against punishing the child because he or she is not acting in an evil manner.
The movie Rob Roy has a poignant scene in which Rob Roy McGregor's wife - having been raped by the movie's villain - finds herself pregnant:
MARY: I am with child, and I do not know who the father is. I couldn’t kill it, husband.
ROB: It’s not the child that needs killing.
Idealist perhaps but also demonstrative of the nonaggression principle & Rob's faith.
To your question: my wife & I discussed this issue while dating. Whether the baby would stay with our family or be offered for adoption is uncertain. However, we agree that the child would not be killed.
This is a no-win argument regardless of various viewpoints, theological, moral, ethical, political. It should never have gotten this far in a political debate. I'm not going to assume what Mourdock meant except to infer that since he is a religious person invoking God who creates life that God is not bound by our logic if He chooses to create life or any other miracles through wicked circumstances. It's one thing for a minister to say this in the context of a sovereignty of God sermon, but quite another thing to insert unnecessarily in a political debate.
TWO WORDS: Andy Horning
I don't necessarily agree it's an inconsistent approach to the abortion issue. The abortion issue involves weighing a woman's right to bodily integrity versus the right of another human being to live. It's not inconsistent to note that a woman's bodily integrity rights might be higher if she's raped. Especially if you're talking an abortion in the first month or two. Plus, I would point out that even the Indiana Right to Life does not oppose the use of the morning after pill (which is not RU 486) for rape vicitms.
Paul, I do have to disagree inasmuch as one is weighing the right to bodily integrity against the right of existence. Stopping the pregnancy necessarily means (at our current medical/scientific knowledge) the destruction of another human being. Simply put, I believe said destruction of the child is not proportional.
The age of the child also seems immaterial to me inasmuch as if the child has human DNA, it's human regardless of the baby's stage of gestation. It becomes too easy to dehumanize the weak, infirm, or handicapped if we judge them to not have attained a given stage of development. We in Indiana should be particularly careful given our state's sterilization policy in the early 20th century.
I have always said that abortion is not nearly the moral absolute either side claims it to be. Technically speaking, both sides are generally "pro-choice," their only difference is when the woman should be able to make that choice. Pro-lifers generally believe that choice comes at conception.
In the case of rape the woman has no choice. If abortion and the morning after pill are prohibited in cases of rape, at no time will the woman have had a choice. It would have been forced upon her, by both the rapist and the government. I can understand why most people, especially women, find the idea of such a policy abhorrent.
For all this talk of the interests of the unborn child in the case of rape, I see little concern for the woman.
Paul said: "The abortion issue involves weighing a woman's right to bodily integrity versus the right of another human being to live."
No, Paul. That's a straw man of the issue.
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