Why Mourdock’s statement is no gaffe

Indiana Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate Richard Mourdock

made statements Tuesday evening during a debate when questioned on his position regarding abortion in the cases of rape or incest. He said:

I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.

Immediately Mourdock came under fire for his statements, similar to the Todd Akin situation. His statement is being called insensitive, disrespectful, shocking, stunning, extreme, a “gaffe,” etc. The statement was immediately twisted to indicate that Mourdock seems to think God planned or intended rape, as if Mourdock were somehow justifying the act of rape itself.

All of which is absolutely ludicrous; after all, look what the man said. He didn’t say God intended rape to happen; he said God intended life to happen. Which, from any sort of a Christian perspective, God clearly did. It follows quite logically that if God is the creator of all life, then “life is that gift from God,” and thus, God intended that life to exist.

Mourdock’s statement was not a gaffe, but rather a clear, reasonable, and sensitive defense of his position to oppose abortion in the case of rape. He did not condone rape (keywords: “horrible situation of rape”); he did not infer that God intended rape. He simply said that God intended for that life to come into existence and it should be realized as a gift from God. His opponents apparently do not understand how to read a sentence. The “that” in “something that God intended to happen” can be corrected to read “life,” and only “life.” It makes no grammatical sense to read that as “rape.”

After the debate, Mourdock clarified his statements:

God creates life, and that was my point. God does not want rape, and by no means was I suggesting that He does. Rape is a horrible thing, and for anyone to twist my words otherwise is absurd and sick.

After that, it is indeed “absurd and sick” to characterize Mourdock as thinking that God wants rape. He manifestly does not think this. Any further implications from any of Mourdock’s opponents that this is what he thinks is just plain false. Which is the more insensitive and disrespectful: saying that even in the case of rape, life is a gift from God, or to repeatedly claim that a person believes something that he explicitly said he does not believe? This demonstrates pretty clearly that Mourdock’s opponents here do not actually care much about the issue, but will use anything they have to undermine Mourdock politically.

It’s also irksome to me, as a devout Christian, to hear God so sanctimoniously spoken of by pro-abortion politicians. One minute everybody’s mad at the religious nut jobs who always bring God into everything, the next minute everybody’s a fervent believer whose religious sensibilities have been offended.

It’s not too difficult to discern which is the more despicable position: believing that life is a gift from God, even in the horrible situation of rape; or believing that it is morally permissible to kill an innocent human being, in fact an unborn baby. Before they get on their high and Godly moral pedestal, perhaps opponents of Mourdock’s position should recall that they’re the ones who condone killing humans. Regardless of how the life has come into being, a life is a life. I don’t think it’s too radical and extreme to believe that life is sacred and that you shouldn’t kill babies. I’d be careful about using adjectives like “extreme” when your own position allows for the killing of unborn babies.

The media will probably continue to side with Mourdock’s opponents in decrying the statement as shameful, insensitive, and extreme…but to those who still retain their wits, it’s not too hard to construe which side is reasonable and which side is intentionally playing stupid for political ends.