Why, I’m Beginning to Think That the Links Between Misogyny and the Anti-Choice Movement Might Not be a Coincidence
Understanding consent is not only contrary to Republican values, it’s contrary to the very will of God!
The latest entrant into the Republican rape insensitivity bake-off is Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who said tonight that “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” He, of course, joins fellow Senate candidate Todd Akin, with his now-canonical “legitimate rape” comment, and Rep. Joe Walsh, running for election in Illinois, who claimed there was no reason a woman would ever need an abortion to save her life or preserve her health. The trailblazer was Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle, who failed to unseat Harry Reid in Nevada two years ago, and famously said that if a hypothetical teenager was raped and impregnated by her father, it was an opportunity to turn “a lemon situation into lemonade.”
Here’s why this is happening: The newer crop of Republican candidates and elected officials are, more often than not, straight from the base. They’re less polished than their predecessors; they’re more ideologically pure. As a result, they’ve accidentally been letting the mask slip and showing what’s really at the core of the right-to-life movement.
Right: as awful as these comments are, they at least have the advantage about being honest and revealing about the motives and implications of the forced pregnancy lobby.
Related: “It’s starting to look like God is intending that we stop invoking him in political debates.”