These days, it’s true. There’s no telling what might come out a Republican’s mouth.
Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock’s recent suggestion that pregnancies resulting from rape should not be terminated because they comprise “something good that God intended to happen” says something really scary about a lot of Republicans and church folk.
First, it’s blatantly insensitive. I wonder if Mourdock has daughters and how he would feel if his daughter was raped. I strain my brain to imagine reasonable words to console the poor girl and convince her to bring her assailant’s offspring to term. I can come up with none. Perhaps they offer a class for it at Mourdock’s church.
Second, it reveals a man devoid of empathy. If Mourdock were a woman or, more specifically, a raped, suddenly pregnant woman, would he still defend this stance? If he were a raped high school girl, would he quit school or put it on the backburner to care for his rapist’s baby? If he were a raped college girl, would he drop some classes or take a few semesters off to care for his assailant’s child? If he were a woman who already had children and a husband, would he have the child and realistically be able to love it as much as the fruits of legitimate wedlock? And what kind of situation would it create for the estranged husband?
And third, if God intended for Mourdock’s daughter or his granddaughter or his wife or his mother or his niece to be raped and have her attacker’s baby, how could this preordained act be considered a crime? God is, I’m told, incapable of evil. And if He intended for a woman to be raped, the rape must have been permitted or perpetuated with a greater good in mind. Would the rape be considered a benevolent assault?
Family values folks stress two-parent households; perhaps a rapist should only be punished if the female aborts the fruit of the defilement. Would pro-life folks advocate freeing the rapist if a woman impregnated via rape carries the “good” resulting from the assault to term? So he could get a job to support it and teach it to play catch?
Heck, regardless of whether the rapist is charged, convicted, acquitted or patted on the back for his role in this intended and therefore blessed pregnancy; the rapist would clearly be awarded standard parental and visitation rights–right?
And if the government took up and legislated Mourdock’s morality in terms of rape, would then the government not be responsible for helping support the rapist’s offspring if he was convicted and sent to prison?
I suppose there is a precedent for Mourdock’s stance in Christianity. The Virgin Mary probably set the proper example. Technically speaking, she wasn’t assaulted, but she was impregnated without consent. And she bore her impregnator’s Son without question or complaint. Should contemporary victims of rape look to the Virgin Mary’s example?
I know God works in mysterious ways, but is the patriarchal, nonsensical gibberish the Republicans keep peddling really an example of God’s work or just the latest in their recent history of sexism and reproductive oppression?
And speaking of ‘isms, does anyone really think the lily white mouthpieces for anti-abortion doctrines would really pitch such a fuss if most of the women having abortions were poor Hispanic or African-American females instead of white females? Women’s access to birth control and the resultant economic mobility have clearly curbed Caucasian propagation trends in this country. Is white population resurgence the dirty secret behind limiting reproductive freedoms?
We all know the catchphrases.
Trans-vaginal ultra-sounds.
Just put an aspirin between your knees.
No exceptions for the mother.
No exceptions for rape.
The female body is naturally capable of terminating unwanted pregnancies.
The stuff coming out of many faithful Republican’s mouths these days is downright disturbing. Do they know what century it is? Are there any limits to their unabashed creepiness?
What will they say next?