Candidate: Rape pregnancies God's will
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- GOP's Mourdock says "God intends" any pregnancies that come from rape
- John Avlon: This is like Akin's assertion that women don't get pregnant from rape
- Mourdock urges confrontation, wants to justify extremist positions on social issues
- Avlon: Electing Mourdock means hyper-partisan fighting, absolutism, religion in policy
Editor's note: John Avlon is a CNN contributor and senior political columnist for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. He is co-editor of the book "Deadline Artists: America's Greatest Newspaper Columns." He is a regular contributor to "Erin Burnett Out Front"
and is a member of the OutFront Political Strike Team. For more
political analysis, tune in to "Erin Burnett OutFront" at 7 ET
weeknights.
(CNN) -- Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock believes that rapes resulting in pregnancy are "something that God intends to happen."
Do you?
It's a relevant question as we enter the last two weeks of this election, because Mourdock's comments are not isolated.
John P. Avlon
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The statement comes from
the same rigid ideology behind conservative Missouri Senate candidate
Todd Akin's musings in August, when he said women's bodies have the
ability to "shut down" pregnancies that result from what he called "legitimate rape."
Mourdock and Akin were
both trying to explain their determination to outlaw abortion even in
cases of rape and incest, a position consistent with the Republican
Party platform, which calls for a constitutional ban on abortion.
Mitt Romney and some other leading Republicans repudiated Akin's comment. But as I pointed out in a CNN column at the time, the problem seemed to lie with the politics and optics rather than underlying policy.
Republicans are
desperately trying to close the gender gap with women, and one way to do
it is to insist that this election is only about economic issues. But
many conservative candidates for Senate harbor deep-seated social
conservative views, an absolute opposition to abortion among them. It's a
position that vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan has long held.
Mourdock: People 'twisted' rape comments
Most Americans believe that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare." And a stunning Gallup Poll taken earlier this month in 12 swing states found that 39% of women
who are registered voters said that abortion was the most important
issue for women in this election. With the Supreme Court likely one vote
away from overturning Roe v. Wade -- a goal that Mitt Romney has
reaffirmed on the campaign trail -- this issue is real and relevant.
That's why Mourdock's
centrist Democrat Senate opponent Joe Donnelly said, "The God I believe
in and the God I know most Hoosiers believe in does not intend for rape
to happen — ever. ... What Mr. Mourdock said is shocking, and it is
stunning that he would be so disrespectful to survivors of rape."
The case against
electing a right-wing ideologue like Richard Mourdock to the Senate goes
deeper than social issues. When Mourdock took on the senior Senate
statesman Dick Lugar in a Republican primary with tea party support, he specifically attacked Lugar's record of bipartisan problem-solving, saying: "The time for collegiality is past ... it's time for confrontation."
That's the kind of
change a Tea-vaneglist candidate like Mourdock represents for the U.S.
Senate, the Republican Party and the nation -- more hyper-partisan
fighting, more absolutism and more religion influencing public policy.
There's nothing libertarian about government forcing a woman to carry
her rapist's baby to term.
Let's be clear --
Mourdock's attempt to square his religious beliefs with his public
policy beliefs is what led to the tortured statement. But what Mourdock
said was not a mistake or a misstatement. It's what he truly believes.
Combined with his
commitment to be an obstructionist and absolutist in the Senate, instead
of a bipartisan problem-solver, it presents a clear choice with
national implications because he's the only Senate candidate running for
whom Mitt Romney took the time to cut a TV ad.
Indiana voters will get
to decide if Mourdock's comments are consistent with their common sense
approach to politics and problem-solving. Voters across the nation will
need to decide whether they want to empower his extreme vision of
politics in Washington over the next four years.
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