Any Sullivan just posted a piece on this at TNR that is surely going to get a lot of pushback from the left but that I think makes a point liberals ought to consider:
Despite the assertions of many liberal writers I read and otherwise admire, I don’t think that politicians like Mourdock oppose rape exceptions because they hate women or want to control women. I think they’re totally oblivious and insensitive and can’t for a moment place themselves in the shoes of a woman who becomes pregnant from a rape. I think most don’t particularly care that their policy decisions can impact what control a woman does or doesn’t have over her own body. But if Mourdock believes that God creates all life and that to end a life created by God is murder, then all abortion is murder, regardless of the circumstances in which a pregnancy came about.
I can't disagree that that likely represents Mourdock's thinking. Since the last time this came up, I guess with Akin's comments a while back, I've done a little reading on the subject of support group for humans who are products of rape and similar subjects, and I can understand the view that life is life. To a point.
What I can't understand at all is someone like Mourdock being so bereft of empathy that he can't put himself in the shoes of a woman told she has to bear such a child, she has no choice in the matter, even if she doesn't share those same beliefs about life being life, period. That's just astonishing to me. How any man can presume that he has the right to make that kind of decision for a woman...but of course so many men do presume exactly that.
Here is one place where I wish liberals were more conversant and comfortable speaking in religious and scriptural contexts. Surely there exists a religion-based answer to the "life is life" assertion. I think the pro-choice side would do better in these arguments if it embraced some of this kind of language, which to be fair some people but not that many do.
In the meantime, well, it is campaign season, and the Democrats have every right to go balls to the wall, so to speak, on this one. It's amazing that Romney hasn't pulled that Mourdock ad yet. Imagine the phone calls to Boston from Tony Perkins and all the other "values" people! If you cut Mourdock loose, Governor, values voters are going to be demoralized.
So, knowing this, the Obama people would be guilty of malpractice if they didn't keep the heat on. So they should keep at this hard.
