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Here goes the GOP again. Richard Mourdock, GOP candidate for U.S. Senate in Indiana, said at a debate on October 22 that pregnancies resulting from rape are “something that God intended to happen” and a “gift from God.”
As we all recall, in August Rep. Todd Akin, GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate in Missouri, made the infamous declaration that “legitimate rape” rarely causes pregnancy because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
Mourdock and Akin are not the only Republicans to have foot-in-mouth disease. Tom Smith, Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, has stated that rape is similar to having a baby out of wedlock.
In California, Doug LaMalfa, a GOP congressional candidate, initially claimed that women who have abortions are more likely to get cancer. His campaign later stated that he was misinformed.
GOP Wisconsin state representative Roger Rivard commented last year that his father had warned him that “some girls rape easy.”
Rep. Rick Berg, GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate in North Dakota, once voted for a bill that would have made any woman who obtained an abortion guilty of homicide, even in the case of rape or incest.
And if you still are convinced that the above instances are isolated, please note that last year GOP Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, Todd Akin, and most of the GOP members of the House of Representatives cosponsored a bill that would have narrowed the exception to federal laws banning federal funding for abortion from all cases of rape to “forcible rape.” Just how much resistance must a woman put up against her assailant to constitute “forcible rape”?
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