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Of Course He Does

[ 59 ] October 25, 2012 | Scott Lemieux

Why shouldn’t Mourdock stand by his comments? They represent what he thinks, whether other anti-choicers are willing to admit it or not.

Comments (59)

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  1. Pestilence says:
    October 25, 2012 at 8:15 am

    Excellent. God forbid he should shade or disguise the least element of his thinking out of mere political calculation. In fact, he should have a talk to some of our fine Southern politicians about how they dissemble on this and other, darker, matters.

    Reply
  2. bradp says:
    October 25, 2012 at 8:22 am

    At least he is consistent.

    He actually has a defense against claims of misogyny by biting the bullet and sticking to the whole life begins at conception nonsense.

    The anti-choicers who argue that abortion is murder except in cases of rape make their woman-hating plain.

    Reply
    • RedSquareBear says:
      October 25, 2012 at 8:38 am

      Say what you will about the tenets of dogmatic anti-choiceism, at least it’s an ethos.

      Reply
    • vacuumslayer says:
      October 25, 2012 at 9:06 am

      How is saying that rape babies are a gift from god not misogynistic? It’s consistently anti-choice, yes. But it’s still misogynistic.

      He obviously takes rape lightly. That is sick.

      Reply
      • bradp says:
        October 25, 2012 at 9:34 am

        I’m not saying that he isn’t misogynistic, just saying he has a defense against the claim.

        When you say:

        He obviously takes rape lightly.

        He could easily counter and say, no “I take an unborn child’s God-given rights seriously.”

        When one allows for a rape exception, to me it seems one is ignoring the claim a woman has to her own body due to her having consensual sex.

        Or it seems one must believe children who are the product of rape have a lower standard than children who are not.

        I doubt the latter is the case.

        Reply
        • Anonymous says:
          October 25, 2012 at 12:11 pm

          That’s not really a good counter.

          And shrugging your shoulders, looking down and adopting a sad face while you insist that women keep their rape-babies is deeply misogynistic. All anti-choice sentiment is. That is why they can never win this argument.

          Reply
          • STH says:
            October 25, 2012 at 7:43 pm

            If you really believe that a human zygote, at the moment of fertilization, has all the rights of a complete, fully-formed human being, then it doesn’t make sense to allow abortion in the case of rape. If it’s murder, it’s murder, regardless of the circumstances of the fertilization. So Mourdock is being more logically consistent, though less politically expedient, than other anti-abortion types.

            The problem, of course, is that they make it completely obvious through this reasoning that they have no flipping idea what’s involved in bearing a fetus to term, then giving it up for adoption. They just shrug and say, “oh, well, that’s the price you have to pay,” which is very easy to say when you never have to pay that price. What women want in all this simply doesn’t matter. So, yes, stunningly misogynistic.

            Reply
      • RedSquareBear says:
        October 25, 2012 at 11:42 am

        It certainly preferences life-rights over body-rights, that may be abhorrent but it’s not clear that it’s necessarily rooted in a hatred of women (he’s not, e.g. saying that male rape-fetuses should be kept but female rape-fetuses shouldn’t be).

        That’s not saying he’s not a misogynist, he probably is.

        Reply
        • STH says:
          October 25, 2012 at 7:47 pm

          Not necessarily a hatred of women, but certainly a massive amount of callous disregard for women’s concerns and well-being. If men could get pregnant, you had better believe assholes like Mourdock would find some “Biblical” justification for abortion. Just look at divorce–there’s plenty in the Bible about divorce not being allowed, but that’s not even a debate any more because no way would the men in power give up that right.

          Reply
          • Uncle Ebeneezer says:
            October 25, 2012 at 8:47 pm

            If men could get pregnant, something tells me the Bible would read a whole lot different than it does. Perhaps even a pro-choice commandment. The writers of the Bible seemed to have a real soft spot for the male gender.

            Reply
        • Anonymous says:
          October 25, 2012 at 8:13 pm

          That would work as an apology if actual self-described pro-life people were actually pro-life; that is, that they advocated policies and culture that preserved and improved the lives of all people. They don’t, because their anti-abortion justifications (babies are sacred, or whatever) are patently rubbish.

          I really hate when men argue this point. It’s the most blatant kind of misogyny. Open your eyes.

          Reply
    • witless chum says:
      October 25, 2012 at 9:20 am

      His ideology of life begins at conception just happens to greatly impact women and not men. I’m sure that’s just one of those coiky-dinks. Another odd happenstance is that he believes his ideology happens to trump the bodily integrity of others almost entirely in the case of women and less so of men. What are the odds! Perhaps the unicorn exists who believes life begins at conception, but is not motivated also by the belief that women are only suited for certain roles, should be excluded from others and/or should be subordinated to me. But what are the odds he’d running for senate in Indiana?

      More seriously, the tendency that comes up in every comment section every time someone is a called a misogynist or racist or homophobe is for people to try to come up with implausible scenarios in which the charge is unfair. Maybe they’re occasionally correct, but the tendency to make low-plausibilty related excuses for these things seems, at best, very odd. Cumulatively, it’s hard to see it at as anything but a veiled defense of the -ism or -ist in question, but it’s probably also related to Internet Pedantism Syndrome and general nerdery.

      Reply
      • greylocks says:
        October 25, 2012 at 9:33 am

        It’s misogynistic.

        Those of you who don’t think so are totally missing the point.

        Men like Mourdock believe they know what God wants but those feather-brained women don’t.

        Furthermore, Mourdock is obviously creating a deity that conveniently supports what Mourdock already believes.

        This is not deep religious conviction. It’s a manifestation of patriarchal misogyny cloaked in a religion invented to justify it. It’s men not wanting women to have the final say on what happens to their sperm.

        The “it just happens to impact women more” argument is bullshit. As someone once said, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.

        Reply
        • UserGoogol says:
          October 26, 2012 at 2:53 pm

          For fuck’s sake, Mourdock didn’t create that deity. Theosophy is a very old idea. People do not form their beliefs based on what would be most convenient given their values. They are shaped by the societies into which they are born and then their beliefs are whittled one way or another as they encounter new ideas and try to reconcile them.

          Society, especially the subset which Mourdock resides in, contains quite a bit of misogyny. But to focus all the attention on Mourdock as an individual is to ascribe him a rather absurd amount of agency over the situation. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. People have believed foolish things since the dawn of time, and they will continue to for the forseeable things. That their foolishness causes significant harm to others doesn’t mean they intend to cause harm to those people, they are simply the beliefs which they have inherited.

          Reply
      • bradp says:
        October 25, 2012 at 9:38 am

        His ideology of life begins at conception just happens to greatly impact women and not men.

        Obviously true, but it doesn’t mean the misogyny charge is necessarily true.

        I’m not trying to absolve Murdock, I’m calling into question the intellectual honesty of anti-choicers who support a rape exception.

        If you believed that a fetus was as morally significant as a newborn, would you support termination of a pregnancy in the situation of rape?

        Reply
        • witless chum says:
          October 25, 2012 at 12:20 pm

          It doesn’t mean it’s necessarily true, but, again, finding someone who believes that and also believes in the rights of women to legal, political and social equality with men would be extremely unlikely. And that’s if you grant that being against legal abortion doesn’t make you a misogynist by definition.

          I’m not trying to absolve Murdock, I’m calling into question the intellectual honesty of anti-choicers who support a rape exception.

          If you believed that a fetus was as morally significant as a newborn, would you support termination of a pregnancy in the situation of rape?

          Having read your comments here for awhile, I don’t doubt that you aren’t trying to absolve Mordock, but similar pretzeling on behalf of dudes who say shitty things has poisoned that well a tad.

          I think you’re right that the Mordock expressed view is more logically consistent, but to say it’s less misogynistic is where I don’t follow you. Misogynistic by slightly means, perhaps.

          Also, I think it’s pretty meaningless because the rape, incest, life of the mother view is just something the antisex league puts up as PR for public consumption. Just like how they aren’t after birth control, too, except when they get the chance to be.

          Reply
    • Xof says:
      October 25, 2012 at 9:24 am

      Only in the same way that the Mormon church had a defense against charges of racism by sticking to their position that being black was the mark of Cain.

      Reply
      • witless chum says:
        October 25, 2012 at 12:27 pm

        Well, but that was in the 19th century, right?

        Certainly not within my lifetime, given that I was born in 1978 when everyone was past such things. Because that would be ridiculous.

        Reply
    • Amanda Marcotte says:
      October 25, 2012 at 10:46 am

      I’m unclear on how casting rapists as agents of God who “gift” women with forced childbirth is really evidence that one is not a misogynist.

      Reply
      • cer says:
        October 25, 2012 at 11:16 am

        Right. Surely we can agree that misogyny is a tune with many verses whether it be deciding that childbirth is the punishment for the slutty women who choose to have sex or that pregnancy as a consequence of rape is a gift to those women, no matter how they might feel about it. Perhaps most telling is how Mourdock drew this conclusion, he didn’t talk to rape victims, he “looked into his heart: to determine what is really best for women. That’s not a man who has a lot of compassion or concern for real, actual existing women who might have some first hand knowledge about this issue.

        Reply
        • herr doktor bimler says:
          October 25, 2012 at 2:18 pm

          he “looked into his heart: to determine what is really best for women”

          Asking women for their perspective was not an option.

          Reply
        • herr doktor bimler says:
          October 25, 2012 at 9:10 pm

          That’s not a man who has a lot of compassion or concern for real, actual existing women who might have some first hand knowledge about this issue.

          His automatic assumption that it his his job “to determine what is really best for women” is probably all we need to know about him.

          Reply
      • Leeds man says:
        October 25, 2012 at 12:06 pm

        He comes from, and speaks for, an established tradition of misogyny which stretches back millenia. That’s where bradp’s assertion of a possible defense does a prat fall.

        Reply
        • STH says:
          October 25, 2012 at 8:02 pm

          Yes, as I’ve said, the argument is logically consistent and his conclusion is the only one you can draw from his premises. But I would argue that the whole thing wouldn’t even come up as a possible argument if there wasn’t a long tradition of not trusting women to make good decisions, treating women as property, not taking women’s opinions seriously, etc., etc. Those are the sort of unspoken assumptions of what he’s saying; they make the argument possible. Again, if men could get pregnant, Mourdock and his buddies wouldn’t dream of getting involved in their private medical decisions.

          Reply
  3. Keaaukane says:
    October 25, 2012 at 8:39 am

    He is being short sighted. Mourdock should extend his “reasoning” further. It is clearly God’s will that you got cancer, so attempting to treat your cancer would violate the Divine Purpose. Think of the health care savings!

    Reply
  4. c u n d gulag says:
    October 25, 2012 at 8:51 am

    I wonder, if Mr. Mourdock’s wife was raped by a black man, if he would still look at that offspring as one of “God’s blessing?” *

    And if he’d spend tears and money raising his wife’s rapists’s child?

    Or his daughter.**

    Or, would he hustle her off to some place where she could quickly and quietely abort that black man’s fetus?

    Yeah – THAT!

    *Note – I’m not advocating, or hoping for something like that. This is just a thought excersize.
    **Also too – ditto.

    Reply
    • witless chum says:
      October 25, 2012 at 9:25 am

      There’s plenty on the right these days who hate women’s freedom more than they hate black people. It’s progress!

      And if Howling Mad Mourdock would turn into a total hypocrite about this if it came to his wife/mom/sister/daughter is really a point in his favor as human being.

      Reply
    • Leeds man says:
      October 25, 2012 at 9:25 am

      It’s a silly thought exercise. We all have beliefs that could be sorely tested by reality. It’s enough to recognize that Mourdock’s beliefs are harmful to women.

      Reply
      • c u n d gulag says:
        October 25, 2012 at 9:44 am

        They’re also potentially harmful to the children who are carried to term, and not given up for adoption.

        I’m a male, and I can’t imagine being the husband having to help raise the blameless children of my blameless wife’s rapist.

        And I can’t even imagine being the woman, having to raise that child, without or without help.

        It must take some kind of superhuman empathy to try to raise that child.

        I’d like to think I could do it, if that situation presented itself. But, wouldn’t it be better not to bring that child into the world in the first place?

        People who support “Forced Labor,” are sociopathic holier-than-thou god-botherers, without an empathetic atom in their bodies.

        Reply
  5. McKingford says:
    October 25, 2012 at 8:56 am

    Once again, the Dems are failing to properly take advantage of this situation. The take-away from Obama’s appearance on Leno yesterday is his line “rape is rape”. Which totally misses the point.

    This needs to be wrapped around Romney’s neck and every other Republican, especially given their supposed focus on the economy. We all know the GOP made huge electoral gains in 2010 on the basis of the weak economy. But what was their legislative agenda – both in Congress and in state houses around the country? An immediate attack on choice. Which, of course, has nothing to do with the economy.

    Obama utterly failed to make this case in the debate against Romney – who used complete weasel words to feign ignorance of any agenda to deal with abortion. Had Obama reminded everyone then that Romney needn’t even be the initiator of clawbacks on abortion rights, it would be much more powerful now to hang on him when a neanderthal like Murdock comes crawling out of the woodwork.

    Reply
  6. parrot says:
    October 25, 2012 at 9:30 am

    gawd intends rapists to rape … what’s the problem? now, get off gawd’s lawn …

    Reply
  7. tsam says:
    October 25, 2012 at 12:30 pm

    I say it’s about time Repigs quit equivocating and adjusting their positions to suit which particular camera into which they are speaking. We all know their end-game is a federal abortion ban (with some possible exceptions that they, of course, will allow at their sole discretion). They know it, we know it, why continue to act like they don’t? Oh, those elections and shit.

    I personally commend Mourdock for standing by his statement. Just because people who aren’t insane won’t vote for him because of it doesn’t make it wrong, it means the system worked, and that’s a good thing. He can cry in his milk while his opponent heads off to Washington.

    Reply
  8. wembley says:
    October 25, 2012 at 1:11 pm

    I didn’t realize until reading further that part of the reason Mourdock made his comments (besides the fact that he’s a lady-hating douchebag) was to distinguish himself from his Democrat and Libertarian opponents, both of whom are also anti-choice. I realize it’s Indiana, but that is so goddamn depressing.

    I also worry that these outbursts are a double-edged sword — it’s great that people are seeing these Republicans for what they are, but eventually, the sheer number of “gaffes” run through the 24-hour news cycle will cease to be shocking for most Americans; it will become normalized; everyday Americans will simply expect Republicans to be misogynist and the Overton window will effectively shift even further to the right than it already is on abortion rights; rape outlawed even in the case of rape and incest will cease to be a fringe position in mainstream discourse and become the new mainstream-right position. If Americans don’t forget their outrage (I doubt any woman would, being a woman myself), the media, which is controlled by dudes, might do it for them. Just strike a hipper-than-thou pose about it — “oh, we all know that the position for a while now has been no rape or incest exceptions,” that kind of thing. Maybe I’m just being unnecessarily doomy, I don’t know.

    Reply
    • tsam says:
      October 25, 2012 at 3:42 pm

      That’s been the defense all along. His Democratic opponent is nearly as crazy as he is. Somebody has to pander harder for the looney vote. Where else could a poor Rape-ublican go? Next up: Euthanasia to protect children from THE GAY!

      Reply
  9. rea says:
    October 25, 2012 at 1:30 pm

    Odd to see a 21st Century senate campaign implode over free will, predestination, and the problem of evil.

    Reply
  10. cpinva says:
    October 25, 2012 at 4:20 pm

    they represent what every republican thinks,

    They represent what he thinks

    he was just dumb enough to say it in public. this simply identifies him as an amatuer.

    Reply
  11. FLRealist says:
    October 25, 2012 at 6:12 pm

    There are several questions I emailed Mr. Mourdock – I’ll let people know if/when I get a response.

    1) Since he believes in forcing a woman to carry her rapist’s child, does he believe the rapist should be granted parental rights?

    2) Since he believes the victim should be required by the state to carry her rapist’s child, does he believe the state is required to provide prenatal care, and public assistance after the child is born?

    Reply
  12. Malaclypse says:
    October 26, 2012 at 7:47 am

    This really says pretty much everything that needs saying.

    Reply

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