Yes, these anti-abortion zealots do *not* make sense
by digby
So, I see that Amy Sullivan is unsurprisingly explaining to liberals why they are misunderstanding Richard Mourdock:
Despite the assertions of many liberal writers I read and otherwise admire, I don’t think that politicians like Mourdock oppose rape exceptions because they hate women or want to control women. I think they’re totally oblivious and insensitive and can’t for a moment place themselves in the shoes of a woman who becomes pregnant from a rape. I think most don’t particularly care that their policy decisions can impact what control a woman does or doesn’t have over her own body. But if Mourdock believes that God creates all life and that to end a life created by God is murder, then all abortion is murder, regardless of the circumstances in which a pregnancy came about.
Take a look again at Mourdock’s words: “I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And...even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” The key word here is “it.” I think it’s pretty clear that Mourdock is referring to a life that is conceived by a rape. He is not arguing that rape is the something that God intended to happen.
Rick Santorum said something similar:
"What he was saying is that God doesn't make mistakes, yes it was a horrible thing, but, you know, God let that happen," Santorum said. "That's the thing that Christians believe — that it's God's will. And it's a horrible thing, but sometimes bad things happen.
"I think to take it for anything other than that," Santorum said, "that somehow God wants people to get raped, is a complete mis-characterization of that comment."
I'm not a religious person so I can't speak to the theology here, but as a logical person I can only hold my head in my hands and moan. God doesn't make mistakes but he didn't intend for a rape to happen. It's God's will but sometimes bad things happen. All of this is supposed to be true simultaneously.
I'm sorry, if it's God's will and he doesn't make mistakes then he must have intended the rape as well as the pregnancy. You can't have it both ways and say he is omnipotent and all powerful and let him off the hook on that half that equation while you insist that the pregnancy is inviolable because God intended it.
This doesn't matter to me because I am not a believer and I don't care what "God's will" is supposed to be. But for anyone who does believe, that logical inconsistency should require some deeper consideration before blurting it out in public and expecting people to accept it as an argument.
These people see women as an abstraction and blastocysts and fetuses as real, which makes it quite clear that they do devalue women and seek to control them. Their motivation for that is irrelevant to me. The fact that Mourdock doesn't think about the living, breathing human being (aka gestation vessel) who is being told she must give birth to her rapist father's child means that he is a complete and utter failure as a person and is totally unqualified to represent the 50% of the population he so blithely dismisses.
.