GOP candidate: "God Intended" Pregnancies from RapeFollow

This seems to be a common view among GOP candidates these days...


I did find it vexing however that the Democratic candidate also opposes abortion, although he adds "in the cases of rape and incest" to the mix. Of course, Romney has personally endorsed this guy running for office, which the Democrats helpfully pointed out:

I do find it amusing though that a GOP canidate can run on the platform that God intended Sally to get raped by her dad and get pregnant. I find it even more amusing that the general opinion about it around here is apathy. I guess there is only so many times before your drunk roommate running around the house naked brings not anger or hilarity but indifference.

I think I feel a song coming on...

This is oddly specific, but reading this reminded me of that one Friends episode where Chandler's boss started calling him by his last name and it caught on with the rest of the office.

The standard argument would be that God is aware of what's going on but not making it happen (although he has that power and does use it as he wishes). Jesus says that God is aware when a sparrow falls, not that God individually crushes each tiny bird skull. Doing so would negate the premise of free will, sin and redemption.

Bad things happen to good people because that's life with free will. The promise of Christianity is that, although you're virtually guaranteed to find suffering in this life, your faith and actions (including how you react to the ills of the world) will reward you with a positive afterlife that lasts far longer than your time on Earth.

FTFY

Also Mourdock has a few screws loose.

Edited, Oct 24th 2012 7:56am by someproteinguy

What disgusts me is that it is meant to phrase the pregnancy as a gift from God. Like you should feel like you're a terrible person if you're unhappy that your rape resulted in a pregnancy.

Because, you know, it wasn't enough to say that, terrible situation or not, that fetus had a right to life. Now you have to attack the women for being victims and not rejoicing over it.

A fair point. I think things get dicey after putting forth belief that "life begins after conception" - it's a belief that could come from non-religious thinking, even though Mourdock definitely seems to get to it through religion. He may be using religious means to drive his policy, but the end result is something that some non-religious people believe too (that life begins at conception). His policy is no more offensive to me than an anti-abortion position that's steeped in non-religious rhetoric.

And as previously mentioned, I don't think that his assertion is demeaning, as it's in line with a widely-accepted belief system. So logically, I don't think there's any reason to be offended. I understand why there's a different reaction between what he said and, per my example, what an athlete or actor says when they invoke god. But I don't think that reaction is based on logic: I think it's too emotional, and prone to misconstruing his words into something more like "Rape pregnancy is a good thing, because God."

Edited, Oct 24th 2012 11:41am by Eske

I don't necessarily agree with this but, without arguing it, I'll just point out that......alone made it a profoundly stupid thing to say in the political arena. "It's just logical" won't mitigate the political damage in a tight senate race.

I have no problem with the 'preciousness of life' aspect, but I think it's demeaning because they aren't allowing the victim come to that conclusion (or not come to that conclusion) on her own.

This is kinda what I was feeling.

You can ground the evil of a rape in free will, and so take the blame of it away from God (assuming you accept that the problem of evil has an answer, which you must if you believe in a Christian definition of God). But what Mourdock is saying is that the child resulting from a rape is intended.

If it's a sin to curse God and his works, then that means it would be a sin to curse the pregnancy and your current situation. Saying that things are the way God intended is the same as saying you have no right to them being otherwise--that to NOT be pregnant* would be evil.

And I think there's an important distinction here that really speaks to the point I'm trying to make. This isn't just about abortion, which would be going against God's will. This is something fundamental to the existence of the pregnancy in the first place. Namely, it's saying that it would have been a perversion of the world for this state of affairs not to have come about. If you had just been raped, without the additional emotional baggage, it would have been more evil than being raped and ending up pregnant.

I think that's incredibly demeaning.

All life is sacred until it leaves the womb and again when it's old enough to vote.

Edited, Oct 24th 2012 1:05pm by lolgaxe

If God wants to gift me with a baby so damn much, He can leave it in a basket on my doorstep instead of sending a rapist to deliver it.

Plus, that way I don't have to wait nine months to open the present!