GOP Senatorial Candidate: God Intended Rape Victims To Get Pregnant

Honestly, what is the problem with rape and Republican candidates this year? First, Rep. Todd Akin loses a lock on a Senate seat by holding forth on “legitimate rape” and how women possess some magic ability to prevent pregnancies by rapists. Now, Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock (who defeated respected Senator Richard Lugar) has proclaimed with only a few weeks to go in the election that the impregnation of women in rape is part of God’s plan. What happened to the good old day when GOP candidates primarily followed a formula campaign based on lower taxes and longer criminal sentences?

Mourdock was asked in the final minutes of his debate with his opponent Joe Donnelly about abortions in cases of rape and proclaimed that when a woman is impregnated during a rape, it is all part of God’s plan — a type of divine family plan via sexual assault. Mourdock proclaimed: “I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that’s something God intended to happen.”

Donnelly promptly after the debate took the position that such pregnancies through rape are not part of what “my God, or any God, would intend that to happen.” Mourdock soon realized that he had pulled an Akin and may have aborted his campaign. He clarified that he did not believe God intended the rape: “Are you trying to suggest somehow that God preordained rape, no I don’t think that. Anyone who would suggest that is just sick and twisted. No, that’s not even close to what I said.” Really? Here is what you said: “I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that’s something God intended to happen.” Sounds a lot like God intended the rape victim to get pregnant. The best that Mourdock could claim is that God did not intend for the rape to occur, but, once it did, decided that it was important for the woman to become pregnant by her rapist.

I am also unclear on why God preordains the pregnancy but not the rape that caused it. This is often a matter of theological debate when people insist that prayer caused God to spare their lives in a tornado but that he decided not to spare the lives of their neighbors or their own home from the tornado. It is the tension that arises from a view that God controls all events as part of a divine plan as opposed to a divine plan that allows free will and/or fate to govern events.

Pat Robertson recently insisted that God does not send tornados but that victims would still have been spared if they prayed more:

However, Robertson does believe that God at times sends natural disasters to punish us as with Hurricane Katrina. That may reflect the more nuanced view of Mourdock that God may not have sent the rapist but did want you to become pregnant by your rapist. The question is whether, if God micromanages such events, did he intend GOP Senatorial campaigns to implode across the country?

Source: Big Story