GOP Senate candidate says most rapes aren't; women can mentally abort

I was being a bit glib, but yeah, that's the logical conclusion from the statement. God wants the kid to be born, God therefore endorses the pregnancy, God therefore endorses the conception. I'll be honest, though, I don't really know what the thought process is behind Mourdock's statement.

I'm not necessarily saying I agree with this dude, and I'm not going to get into a theological discussion as his proxy. I'm just saying it's pretty obvious what this guy meant, and he didn't mean "God likes rape".

Likes, doesn't give a shit, does it really matter to the rape-ee when you're ambivalently stepping over the rape proceedings to buy a newspaper?

If God wanted the pregnancy, why did he choose to make it happen through a horrible act like rape?

Or did God not intend for the rape to happen? Is that even possible, considering he is omnipotent and omniscient? Maybe he was asleep at the time?

Whose view of God are we talking about anyway? How does he know what God intends?

Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut and not brought up God in the discussion in the first place?

Yes, I believer that is what he believes. Any act of procreation, no matter how vile, is a chance for a child to be born to service God.

I just shows how absolutely fucking crazy the religious fundies can be.

It must be true. The article DISAPPEARED. I wonder why. It must have self aborted.

But the kid wouldn't exist without the rape. Ergo, the rape must also be God's will. Or does God's will only extend to fetuses and not women.

Well, God could've tried the ol' immaculate conception trick that he's used before. That would have made the whole "need for rape" thing moot...

The article was also on Yahoo, this morning. SAME SELF ABORTION.

Once again, the hopes and dreams and autonomy of an existing, self-aware human being (ie the woman) aren't even mentioned.

Where did these articles go? The fix is in!

At this point, I'm voting Akin just to spit on McCaskill and her atrocious, inept, fear-mongering, mud-slinging campaign. Apparently Akin is going to single-handedly rule Social Security to be unconstitutional, outlaw abortions, and not fill in for when Obama fails to protect the state of Missouri from teh evuls of imports from China. Meanwhile McCaskill has already helped push the nation further towards totalitarianism with the Obamacare bill . . . of course, Miss I'm-So-Moderate won't mention that in her ads.

I really don't have anything else to add to this thread.

They've gone their separate ways quite some time ago.

Meh, blatant partisan hypocrisy isn't really news.

A collection of the GOP's comments on rape, complete with cites. It ain't a pretty picture.

The fact that they make use of so many cutesy little metaphors suggests they put a lot of thought into trying to say "Oh, really, it's no big deal!"

Given that the reported rape statistics in this country are 25% for females/10% for males, do these people live in a bubble?

So if rapes and rape pregnancies are God's will, doesn't it stand to reason that abortions are too?

Gingrich Defends Mourdock’s Rape Comments, Advising Women To ‘Get Over It’

It's all God's will. I think that fellow in Florida ought to be exonerated of the 2nd degree murder charge on this basis.

You know why these qualifiers come up? Because there is an unfortunate and disgusting minority of women who believe rape and lying about being raped is a hunky-dory way to blackmail and punish men.

Those bitches make people add things like "honest rape" to differentiate which makes real rape victims feel even more victimized as they fear people won't believe them.

I think lying about being raped should be a crime.

I don't think that is at work here, generally speaking. I think rather the distinction is between "forcible" rape, being the traditional sort where a gun, knife or real threat of force of some sort is used and is usually between strangers, and the other sort of rape which often involves acquaintances and does not necessarily have weapons.

Generally, it already is in so far as filing a false police report, perjury and so forth.

Now, how often that is prosecuted is another thing.

For public policy's sake, I would think it'd be a bad idea to prosecute any but the most egregious case of lying, for fear that legitimate rape victims would say "Wait, there's a chance that if I'm not believed, I could be the one going to jail? Forget reporting this!"

Not to defend Akin, because he's an idiot and a tool, but I believe it's been stated that the distinction he was trying to make was between rape and statutory rape...

not generally, no, but there are a couple of quotes in that chart which are making that distinction, rather than Akin's. It's disingenuous to include those.

why doesn't that deter everyone from reporting crimes?

This is why the GOP can't have nice things.

I'm not sure what you are saying.

There may be a degree that the possibility of being wrongly labeled a liar does deter a group of people across the board. We would never know one way or another for sure.

We can say with some confidence that no crime is reported at 100 percent accuracy, based on such things as surveys of people about crime victimization.

We can also say with some authority that rape is a particularly underreported crime, based on those surveys.

Rape is a he-said, she-said sort of crime, and the police and public attitudes to it are different from any other crime.

Even though there are undoubtedly false reports of burglaries, robberies, thefts, assaults, etc., the false reporters of those crimes don't get the same stigma as a false reporter of rape.

And generally speaking, the reporters of burglaries, robberies, thefts and assaults are not attacked in court or elsewhere as lying about these things. Not true about rape, where the most common defense is consent.

So in the face of the common sense that a) a person who claims rape is likely to be attacked as a liar anyway and b) even if she is not, going through the rape with the police and at trial is going to be a harrowing experience, I could see that the possibility of prosecution as a liar could be a last straw to deter a rape victim from coming forward in a way that I would not see for most other crimes.

The chart tuckerfan posted includes at least one (the Honest Rape quote) where the distinction is what Tamar was saying, not a distinction between forcible and not. So it's disingenuous to include it.

Why?

It's very easy to prove a theft happened, or didn't, yes. But it's less so for assault. Admittedly, consent is not a common defense, but I can't imagine in cases without witnesses that the defendent's first defense isn't "s/he's lying/did something stupid and now wants someone to blame/money"

So what's the solution then, to increase reporting? We can't very well toss out inncocent until proven guilty for accusations of rape.

The chart tuckerfan posted includes at least one (the Honest Rape quote) where the distinction is what Tamar was saying, not a distinction between forcible and not. So it's disingenuous to include it.[/quote]

If you are accusing me of being disingenuous, I haven't read every post in this thread, haven't seen the chart that you are referring to, and I was responding to Tamar's post generally. Obviously, there are certainly people with different meanings as to how they are parsing legitimate rape vs. honest rape vs. real rape vs. forcible. My take is that generally that they are considering rape that doesn't involve the use of force or the threat of force as legitimate/honest/real/forcible. There are certainly people who mean different things, though.

Why what? Don't people think that people who claim thefts, assaults, etc. are generally not making it up, whereas there is a substantial sentiment that a portion of the people who report rape might be making that up?

The answer to that is probably a complex combination of the other things I said in the post such as rape being so much more a he-said, she-said crime than most others, lingering sexism, and perhaps the fact that people have been documented to have lied about being raped in a way that might seem more frequent or understandable than lying about other forms of victimization.

Usually in a case that might see the inside of a courtroom, there are circumstantial evidence that would make it clear that a crime had been committed.

In a typical rape case where the parties know each other, most circumstantial evidence that might point to rape could point to rough but consensual sex.

I would also say that a rape victim is vulnerable to any defense that points to her as a liar in a way that a theft or battery victim is not. In other words, from what I've been given to understand, there's a lot of second-guessing, self-doubt, psychological scars, etc. by a lot of victims as to whether they were responsible for the attacks on them. No one would blame a guy who gets his wallet stolen for his propensity to keep the wallet in a place where it was all too easy to be lifted.

No one is calling for innocent until proven guilty to be thrown out. I don't know if there is an adequate solution to increase reporting, other than to gradually eliminate the stigma that comes with reporting rape. And that is not an easy process.

http://www.dayswithoutagoprapemention.com/

And he's dead.