October 28, 2012
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Richard Mourdock’s God is a Fucking Asshole
In all the Senate races this campaign cycle, only one candidate was endorsed in a commercial by Mitt Romney: Richard Mourdock.
Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said last Tuesday in a Senate debate:
“I know there are some who disagree and I respect their point of view but I believe that life begins at conception. The only exception I have for – to have an abortion is in that case for the life of the mother. I just – I struggle with it myself for a long time but I came to realize that life is that gift from God, and I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape that it is something that God intended to happen.”
So we learn that Richard Mourdock’s god gives these women the “gift” of getting pregnant from being violently raped (or, as Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan would say, “legitimately raped). It’s kind of like that horrible sweater your aunt knitted you last Christmas, except that you can’t take it off for 9 months, it costs money you may not have to maintain, and instead of horribly stitched reindeer wearing stocking caps it has a picture of your rapist’s face on it. So in retrospect, it’s nothing like that sweater.
And, this being a gift from God and all, you obviously can’t return (read: abort) this gift. I mean, it’s God, right? He obviously knows what he’s doing, and this is all part of his divine plan. Unless of course this glorious gift of a rape baby would cause imminent harm to the mother (excluding emotional trauma leading to rape, which of course is just ridiculous to even consider). In the case where this rape baby gift could kill the mother, it gets to be regifted, because while that rape pregnancy is God’s will, it’s obviously not his will that the mother die. I mean, just ask Richard Mourdock, who obviously knows what is and isn’t part of God’s plan.
He then said:
“God creates life, and that was my point. 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.”
Newsflash: If anything you’ve said necessitates you make a formal public statement asserting that rape is bad, you’ve fucked up. Badly.
But what does this say about your god in the cases where a woman is raped, she gets pregnant, but that pregnancy would kill her by carrying it to term? If her getting pregnant is part of God’s plan, wouldn’t her dying from the pregnancy be part of the plan, too? And who are we, Mr. Mourdoch, to question God’s plan? But maybe it’s his plan to have doctors save this woman from being killed by the pregnancy gifted to her by her rapist. Of course, if this is part of God’s plan, it would point to the inescapable fact that God is a complete fucking prick. A much kinder, gentler god would avoid the whole rape and pregnancy in the first place, since none of them lead to that wonderful gift of life that Mr. Mourdoch and the rest of his staunchly hard-line anti-abortion Republican cohorts. Maybe a kinder god would give the rapist a horrible case of diarrhea that night, keeping the rapist in and avoiding the rape altogether. Or better yet, have his penis fall off. Of course, then maybe he wouldn’t be able to go on spreading the gift of life to other lucky women.
What’s amazing is how many prominent conservative politicians are still putting their support behind this candidate. Maybe they depleted their rape outrage reserves on Todd “Vaginas Know Anti-Rape Sperm Kung Fu” Akin. Or maybe they are ideologues who care more about getting as many Republicans into the Senate as possible, regardless of how immoral, idiotic or ignorant they may be.
Mourdock’s Democratic opponent, Joe Donnelly (who is currently up in the polls by 7 points and growing), is a big time Blue Dog who opposes abortion with exceptions for rape, incest, and the mother’s life. Anti-abortion groups are attacking him, utilizing (read: exploiting) the children of rape victims, all of whom should be told that nobody is trying to force the victims of rape to get abortions, simply not limiting their options to back alleys and coat hangers.
Comments (19)
Funny how these supporters are anti-choice with no exception to the mother’s life, but chances are they also highly support more troops overseas. Because if they don’t support God through christianity, they deserve to die anyways, right?
You can’t control the wording of the people you know. For example, President Obama could not control what Rev. Wright said. I said that back in 2008. He has no control over the man who used to be his pastor.
That is the first time I saw the guy’s comment in context and although it was poorly worded, it appears he was just trying to say that every child is a gift from God and therefore a child should not be aborted under any circumstance except when the mother’s life is at risk.
So lets break down his actual statement:
1. Every child is a gift from God.
2. A child should not be aborted because of rape.
There are many pro-life people who agree with that even if they would not have said the two sentences so close together. The pro-life position is that the child is a living human being and deserves protection. Say a woman was raped and she got pregnant and after she had the baby she found out that the rapist was the father (say it was unclear before). Would it be appropriate for her to take the life of the child? No. Why? Because the child is a living human being. Lets say Richard Mourdocks said after the baby was born, “I don’t believe the mother should take the life of this child even if the baby was the product of rape. The child is a gift from God.” It would still be an unfortunate statement to give the two sentences so close together. But you would still support his position that the one month old child should have his/her life protected. Why? Are you a religious conservative? No. You believe it is a living human being and you can’t just kill a one month old baby. There are some people that have seen actual ultrasounds and watched as the baby moves around inside the mother and they have come to the conclusion that he/she is a living human being inside there even if he/she is dependent on his/her mother. So they feel the life should be protected.
I think you said you are a biologist. It is odd to me that someone who claims to be a man of science and laughs at people who don’t believe in evolution and yet can look at an ultrasound and say, “I can’t tell if this is a living human being that is moving around in there.” I am not a science major but I have seen all three of my kids ultrasound and it was pretty obvious that it was a living child in there.
None of this is meant to offend you in any way or to insult you. I am simply giving my general observation. And I don’t even know Richard Mourdocks and your post right here is the first time I read his full statement. I could care less if he wins or loses his district (or whatever he is running for).
@TheTheologiansCafe - (1) If every child is a gift from God, who are we to say that the life of the mother is more important than a gift from God? (2) In a court case against a rapist, could he use as a defense that he was only carrying out God’s will?
While I agree with @GodlessLiberal that Mourdock made a politically imprudent statement, politicians will do that. How about President Obama mirroring Jon Stewart’s question that four dead Americans in Libya is not “optimal”?
But what a @GodlessLiberal probably does not appreciate is that while the act of rape is horrific, some good can come out of the bad. Take Ryan Bomberger‘s case. He is a dynamic young bi-racial film producer. But he was the product of an interracial rape. Yet the woman decided not to kill the innocent life, took him to term and gave him over to adoption to a family in Amish country raising 13 children. He has an incredible inspiring approach to life and has been engaged with the Radiance Foundation in Atlanta to champion innocent life.
Again, Mourdock’s gaffe will add fodder to liberals attempts to obfuscate the referendum on Obama with the War on Women meme. Polling isn’t looking good on that, considering that Romney has closed a 16 point gender gap and Obama 2012 persists in puerile politics with their Lena Dunham “First Time” campaign.
I think that @TheTheologiansCafe has some good points. Though I am uncertain myself about my views on abortion, the view that a child is a child, no matter how early is a legitimate view to have. Mourdock did not say that rape is ok, or that rape is a gift from God, or that rape is intended to happen. He stated that children are a gift from God, and that children may be intended to happen- a view that many Christians share. He’s just stupid in his word phrasing. >_>
Also, Romney was asked to stop the endorsement ad by several fellow republicans. The ad still runs.
Great point. It does not even make sense to say the pregnancy by rape was God’s intention when it means the woman will die from the pregnancy. You would think an all knowing and almighty God would have worked it all out so the woman would not die and if he intended for the woman to die it does not make sense for Mourdock to decide the situation is an exception making abortion possible. Just restating your point.
@TheSutraDude - Might as well be a campaign for Obama.
Republicans pulled their financial support out of Todd Akin’s campaign but have since quietly put it back. They know their agenda is hugely unpopular among Americans but are trying to eek out wins to push it once they are in office anyway.
Was he saying that life beginning is intended to happen or rape is intended to happen? That’s what I’m confused about.
@DEISENBERG – The logic behind Mourdock’s statement is that Life, for his God, is the utmost thing; all of life links back to it, all of the world can be interpreted through it, etc. It’s the base, if you will. Which I say all to underscore why, as others have pointed out, the statement he made was saying that – though the rape wasn’t wanted, planned, etc. – that child’s life should be preserved and not aborted.
It’s not really that the rape was part of God’s will but that any life given is part of God’s will because life is precious and should be cherished to the utmost.
It’s that reasoning that would drive the answer, if Mourdock were to be consistant, that – if there is the chance of survival for both – no choice should be made in a situation where there is a risk to the mother. If I’m not mistaken, (if there is a clear outcome of death for one or the other) you can choose. From this, your second question should also be answered.
If we want to legitimately respond to these lines of reasoning, we have to put forth an argument (complex enough as to encompass this scenario) that there are times where life is not the highest end to achieve. Rather, I think what those who would argue that aborting a child of rape is the right option are really arguing is that reducing the quality of life for the mother who would have to deal with a child borne out of one of her most traumatic experiences is not worth another life. Or, of course, that a bundle of cells are not equal with a fully formed human.
While I rarely agree with him, Dan’s scenario works rather well because it posits a scenario where we would all agree that it is a human life (and assumes we all agree that murder is wrong). The womb is more difficult because life (from possible non-life as a zygote until definite life at birth) is more a spectrum the entire time there. When do we say life begins.
Which leaves us with the questions of whether we start partitioning forms of life – depending on your definition of Life – (is a zygote less worthy of saving than a full human?) or partitioning stages of life (could we say that a fetus who is barely conscious and has not developed any attachment to life – memories, property, etc. – is able to have itself terminated by others for the sake of a life who most certainly has all those attachments – as well as the ability to perceive losing them – and would have her own stability threatened by this reminder of her rape?). Or do we side with Mourdock and say that all of life is precious and ought to be saved – so precious, in fact, that we cannot make a choice to definitely terminate one to save another when there is the possibility that both may be saved, since it is so precious that it would actually be profane to terminate it (regardless the situation)?
Forgive me for being somewhat convoluted but I think that is the crux of this whole argument and what is actually being debated.
@thirst2 - Yes, you’re answer is convoluted to the point that it is also denseless. Please explain how a life that would have come about ONLY through a rape is part of God’s will.
Every anti-choice individual discusses this issue in terms of the embryo and ignores the woman. It doesn’t matter that the embryo is human–of course it is human–the point is, you cannot assign any rights to that embryo without taking rights away from the woman. No one has the right to commandeer someone else’s body to sustain their own life. You cannot be compelled to give someone a kidney, even if they will die without it. You can’t even be compelled to donate blood, even if someone will die without it, and even though donating blood is a quick, safe, trivial procedure. Yet some demand that women be compelled to undergo the non-trivial, unsafe, life- and health-threatening procedure of pregnancy and childbirth that even in the best of circumstances will do her permanent damage.
Furthermore, in discussions of rape, anti-choice individuals seem to think that abortion is about “punishing the innocent baby.” It is nothing of the kind. Abortion is about saving the woman from nine months of utter torture. Being forced to carry a rape-induced pregnancy is like being raped over and over and over again, continuously. And I agree completely, GodlessLiberal, that if that is indeed what God intended, God is a sadistic raping prick. But we already knew that, didn’t we? It’s in the bible.
@DEISENBERG – *your
I never said that it was; I simply noted that this was Mourdock’s (and, I imagine, others who support him) argument (or something similar to it).
My point was that this was one of the arguments that are at play in this discussion; the task at hand is to determine whether its a valid argument.
If I were to play Devil’s Advocate, I might imagine that Mourdock would argue that all (human) life is sacred. All life, thus, could be construed as a gift of God.
Your statement is making assumptions that I don’t think Mourdock (were he to say his views articulately) would make. It is not the rape that is part of God’s plan; the rape happened, it’s indescribably unfortunate, but – in the middle of this horrible exercise of free will by a selfish person – God gives life.
Now, of course, a person might say that giving life to a person from rape is horrible. Even if all life is precious and worth saving, it’s terrible of a God to give a person a child from rape; if it happened as a simple result from biology, it would still be horrible but the God would not be at fault. The issue with those arguments is that it still doesn’t address the issue that brought this all up – should it be acceptable to abort the result of a rape?
This is what brings about my second to last paragraph in my first response – an outline of, I think, the major arguments in this discussion. My comment was in no ways a report of my personal views regarding the subject.
The point of laying out all these arguments is so that actual responses could be had; the largest impediment, I think, to any resolving regarding this debate is that people speak past each other.
While I’m certain there are people out there who hold what people thought Mourdock’s views were the first time, that’s not what he’s saying; and no one is really addressing what Mourdock’s actually saying with a proper argument. It’s much like the rhetoric in the notion of choice over your body from the pro-choice field; that argument is only valid if we can say that the zygote is not life; if it is life, abortion is murder. So both sides end up arguing for different things (abortion is choice vs. abortion is murder) besides not addressing the underlying assumptions inherit in both conclusions.
Of the three outlines I gave in my last post, I think the a-zygote-is-a-bundle-of-cells one is the best bet because it gets out of the all-Life-is-sacred scenario by simply not being Life. However, as I also had mentioned, there is a bit of a spectrum in the womb – when does Life, then, properly begin? At birth? Third trimester?
Maybe it’s not so much that answers have not been given but that that these answers have been developed in their respective camps instead of against opposing arguments. In at least this case, that’s because Mourdock poorly articulated his point to begin with, sure.
In any case, I presented all three outlines at the end of my last post to give a wider understanding of the actual arguments at play since you were so stuck on God-preordains-rape.
@TheTheologiansCafe -
Thoughts on Thomson’s famous violinist thought experiment? (It’s described on her wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Jarvis_Thomson .)
Is it morally wrong to unplug yourself in that situation? Are you able to come up with a good distinction from that situation when compared to a rape situation?
It’s more basic than that. God is a rapist and pedolphile. He searched the world for the perfect teen aged girl to impregnate.
@transvestite_rabbit - This is also a very compelling argument. *sigh* This is why I’m so undecided when it comes to the abortion issue. Both sides have very good arguments (when those arguments are presented well).
if god just “intended for life to happen” not the rape part… isn’t there some story in there where he did something like that without anybody penetrating anybody else? …. hrmmmmm
i always think it’s in a bad relationship when one constantly has to make excuses to people about one’s partner, and that goes for a lot of religious people –> god as well.
@Insomnia_Pickles_XtraTomato -
People don’t make excuses, it’s just that there’s so much confusion about Christianity and the nature of God that needs to be rectified. Too many people claiming Christianity or standing against it say all kinds of things are the case without having read the Bible for themselves. If someone hasn’t read the Bible, it’s very easy to twist or misconstrue or misunderstand what Christianity stands for. I don’t get how people who haven’t read even a whole book of the Bible come out to say anything.
As for conception, no child conceived just happens without God’s intent or having a plan for the life. He allows bad things, even rapes to happen because he allows humans have free will. He won’t involve himself in the lives of humans if they don’t involve Him in theirs, and if someone does involve God in their lives He could still let bad things happen if he has a higher purpose for it. People rationalize God based on human character, but His ways aren’t our ways as the Bible tells us.
It’s not like God rejoices or is happy when rapes happen, but he gives humans free will. In the Bible He said he knew us while we were yet in our mother’s wombs and knew our names. He also said he even knows the number of hairs on our head. Lots of people who were conceived due to rape have done great things with their lives, and every individual can change mankind, so it’s hardly ridiculous to say God intends for lives to be even those conceived in rape. His issue was just how he stated it, and the media being eager to paint conservative candidates in bad light.