Try as they might to present a centrist image for Mitt Romney’s sake, social issue zealots running on the Republican ticket can’t seem to contain themselves. The latest to articulate his extremism on abortion is Richard Mourdock, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Indiana who said during a debate Tuesday that
“even if life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.”
In the ensuing uproar, Mr. Mourdock was quick to apologize without offering a retraction. But Mr. Romney’s camp was even quicker. They instantly denounced the comment.
Even at that, the campaign said Mr. Romney still supports Mr. Mourdock’s candidacy for the Senate, a regrettable case of politics trumping principle. Across his own political career, Mr. Romney has evolved quite a bit on abortion. A decade ago he told Planned Parenthood that he backed “state funding of abortion services” under Medicaid. Now he opposes abortion and would defund Planned Parenthood.
Mr. Mourdock at least exhibited consistency on the issue, being opposed to abortion with only one exception, to save the life of the mother. On God and rape, the candidate said he was “sorry” his comments were “twisted” by critics. “God creates life, and that was my point,” he said Wednesday. “God does not want rape, and by no means was I suggesting that He does.”
If that’s the case, what if a raped woman concluded by the same religious reasoning that God would allow her to reject the results of her violation? That sort of question was never addressed as Republicans scurried back from the issue.
Mr. Mourdock’s discomfort echoed that of Republican Representative Todd Akin of Missouri, a Senate candidate who lost the support of leading Republicans earlier this year when he postulated that women’s bodies could mysteriously prevent pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape,” whatever that could possibly be. Former Senator Rick Santorum, when he campaigned for the Republican presidential nomination as something of a solid father figure, said if his daughter was raped and impregnated he would advise her “to make the best out of a bad situation.” “I think that the right approach is to accept this horribly created, in the sense of rape, but nevertheless, in a very broken way, a gift of human life and accept what God is giving to you,” was his advice to victims.
Democrats denounced Mr. Mourdock’s comments as outrageous and demeaning to women. Other Republicans shunned Mr. Mourdock more totally than Mr. Romney did. Particularly New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte, a leading Republican woman, who quickly canceled her scheduled appearance todaywith Mr. Mourdock on the Indiana hustings, flatly disagreeing with Mr. Mourdock’s comments on God and rape —no ifs, ands or Mitts about it.
