The Rape Rhetoric of Campaign 2012

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN OCT 25, 2012

Here is the post that explains my rationale for what I'm doing here. Inside the Mind of an Undecided Voter.

So, it's Thursday. The big news continues to be the Mourdock comment about rape. I believe he probably did mean to say that the life that was conceived at conception is a gift from God like any other life even if it was created under heinous circumstances. But I guess when I look at the pattern, it's a little unsettling. Maybe he truly did say what he meant. Nobody knows. But patterns are often telling of a party's bent. Compound that with the fact that women still make 78 cents to the dollar of men, and there seems to still be a sense that women aren't valued. Don't get me wrong...I feel really imporant right now: I'm a female. I'm an undecided voter. I'm in the middle class. Everybody seems to want my vote.

The Republican Rape Quote Pattern

• Rick Santorum (republican) about rape victims Jan 25, 2012: "...we have to make the best out of a bad situation. And I would make the argument that that (continuing the unwanted pregnancy) is making the best."
• Todd Akin (republican) August 19, 2012: "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways of shutting that whole thing down."
• Richard Mourdock, October 23, 2012: "I came to realize life is that gift from God. I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."

Are all of these comments going to change my vote? Probably not for President and I wasn't going to vote for Mourdock anyway. Some of his paid volunteers already clued me in on some of the weirdness surrounding his campaign and I trust their judgment. Even more important, I didn't like the way he ran the campaign against Lugar. Disrespectful and nasty.
However, I am continually puzzled at why women won't stick up for women?
 Does the Republican Party Really Stand for Limited Government?

If you're a true Republican who believes in limited governmental control, how in the world would you allow the government to force a person to carry a pregnancy to term? If you let government decide that women don't have control over their reproduction, then that same government can decide to force women to have abortion. Ever heard of the infanticide that occurs in communist China?

Fair or unfair, the belief that life begins at conception and is God's Will, is part of a religious belief. We have separation of church and state. Let each woman decide whether she wants to carry a pregnancy to term. Its her body. Its her decision. She must live with the consequences, either way.