Sandy Strikes New York City: Rush Limbaugh Calls it God's Will

Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle

A woman who gets pregnant as a result of a rape is pregnant because of God's will.  So sayeth the Republican Party. Or Mr. Murdoch, a Republican. Other Republicans are not appalled by the comment, but by the reaction. They say Democrats are playing politics, twisting meanings.

(Actually, this blog is going to be soft on attribution.  I don't remember which Republican said what any more. They all sound alike to me by now.)

In a way, there is a consistency to the thinking:  After all, the fetus did not rape the mother.  If you consider that eight cell conceptus a human being, then it has an immortal soul, and it has not had a chance to sin yet. So it is, by definition, innocent. Why "kill" it? What has that conceived thing done to deserve extermination?

When you believe life begins at conception, this is where you are led. 

And then you get to the idea of what kind of rape?  Another Republican (? Aiken)  floated the idea of "legitimate rape," by which he meant, I suppose, some women who claim to have been raped were not raped. They had consensual rape and then went home and thought about it and decided they didn't like what happened, and they were raped.  There was  that case of a Brown university junior who had sex with a drunken coed, who, the next morning gave him her phone number and seemed happy enough, until she got back to her dorm where who knows what happened, but then she claimed to have been raped. Considering that case, the concept emerges that not every woman who claims to have been raped may have had sex with a man who had any idea what he was doing was rape. He thought he had drunken sex with a willing partner.

So then we get to the murky area of decision:  If a woman says she was traumatized by the sex which resulted in pregnancy, is she entitled to the exception which allows her to have a legal abortion?  Does the right or wrong of abortion depend on the mother's state of mind at the time of intercourse?  Can it depend on the mother's state of mind an hour after intercourse?  

Paul Ryan would make no exception for rape, and you can see the logical consistency of his argument.  But he would make no exception for the health of the mother, either. So would you agree if the mother would likely die if she carries the pregnancy to term,  she cannot have an abortion?

How about the mentally deficient woman, who has intercourse, not understanding what it is, and gets pregnant? Can she have an abortion?

The Democrats have their own consistency: Let the mother decide what she wants. She is the one who  has to carry the pregnancy and deal with the consequences.

The problem with God's will is we do not hear directly from God. We cannot really know His will. Some, of course, say they know God's will, because they find it in the Bible or from personal revelation. But Democrats, in general, are leery of this claim. The Taliban makes the same claim, as does every wild eyed fanatic.

Rush Limbaugh, of course, is never in doubt. He hears voices in his ears. 

That is the Republican mindset.  

I think it was Bertrand Russell who asked:  Why is it the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt?