Rape and "God's will"

U.S. Senate Republican candidate, Richard Mourdock, made headlines and threw the Republican establishment into turmoil with his attempt to explain his opposition to allowing abortion of pregancies that result from rape.   Saying that creation of a life is God's will, then he would allow no exception in such cases.

Of course, Democrats made haste to use this as a political weapon (who wouldn't in a close race?), implying that Mourdock was saying that rape was God's will.  I don't think that's what he meant, but still he had some explaining to do to clarify that.   Which he sort of did, and apologized -- but is that what he really believes?

I do not agree, but as I've written before, if you are going to be a strict defender of the unborn, and if you believe that a person exists immediately after fertilization, then it shouldn't matter how that life was created -- it exists and must be protected.   To follow this principle, the only exception can be to save the life of the mother;  and that's different because if the mother dies the fetus dies as well.   So it's comes down to sacrificing one life to save another, as an alternative to both lives being lost.

But this has prompted some more serious discussion.   Now theologians and ethicists are weighing in -- and almost all differ with Mourdock's interpretation.   A Roman Catholic theologian said he found Mourdock's comments troubling, because "God does not want rape to happen."   Murdock's own pastor in the Christian Fellowship Church in Evanston, IL, said that his comments do line up with their church's belief in the sanctity of human life and that life begins at conception;  but he also said that God would condemn rape.

The Phoenix police chaplain, who frequently is called in to emergency rooms when a rape victim is brought in, told of a 12 year old girl whose father had repeatedly raped her and kept her on drugs to facilitate her compliance.    Did God intend for this to happen? he asks.  (By the way, she did get pregnant and chose to have an abortion.)

Theologians discuss it in terms of the time-less, and probably unanswerable, question:  "How do you explain evil in a world where God is loving?"   Or as it was put in a book by one of my professors at Duke:   If God is all-powerful, then he is not good;  if he is good, then he cannot be all-powerful.

Paul Wolpe, who is the Director of the Emory University Center for Ethics, says that Mourdock's argument is the equivalent to saying that "you shouldn't pull people out of the rubble because God intended the earthquake to happen or we shouldn't try to cure disease because it's God who gave us the disease."

Wolpe says that perspective was rejected by virtually every major religion a long time ago.

Politics !!   Bah humbug !!  I'm about fed up.   Three debates, and climate change was never mentioned.  So the final days of the campaign are consumed with argument about rape and abortion.

Ralph