Who is going to win?

[Imran Siddiqui]

In case you didn't notice 1) Mitt Romney is not Richard Mourdock, 2) Richard Mourdock's statement is not as unreasonable as the left is making it out to be, and 3) STOP COPY-PASTING IMAGES YOU SEE ON YOUR FACEBOOK FEED!

All this. 100%

[Imran Siddiqui]

The 'not unreasonable' part is that if you start from the belief that life is sacred, always, and that an embryo is alive from conception, that it's not okay to kill it even if there are really extenuating circumstances.

Of course. And also if you have the orthodox Christian notion that God can and does turn things that were done for evil into good (ie, the famous verse of Genesis 50:20), then God intending the pregnancy is God turning the evil act of rape into a potential good.

[regexcellent]

If you think that fetuses are moral people then you cannot also believe that it's okay to kill them based on the circumstances of their conception. Not only is what Mourdock said reasonable, but had he said something different it wouldn't have been.

[Jaguar]

Mourdock, as a Christian, believes in an omnipotent, omniscient God. His beliefs imply that God knowingly allows evil to happen. People have debated this issue for at least four millennia. It's a hard question for the religious to answer. It's true that Mourdock needs a satisfactory answer to the Problem of Evil, but the same is true for the 99* currently-sitting senators with religious affiliation to the God of Abraham. And it's unclear why any of them needs to discuss it during a campaign.

As usual, my friend Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post nails it:

There are few less productive exercises than watching your senate candidates argue about Who Can Best Divine What God Wants When Rape Is Concerned.

When someone running for senate is issuing statements along the lines of: “I, a true Hoosier, know God better than my opponent does. He is confusing Final Causes and Efficient Causes!” you know that something is deeply, deeply wrong.

Are we really going to sit down and discuss the will of God? Because I am supposed to go bowling sometime in the next sixty years.

Who bears the consequences of horrible acts? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do good things happen to bad people? What is the nature of the Divine?

But, more fundamentally, why are we debating Who Knows God Best in a race for the U.S. Senate?

*As far as I know, Mark Udall (D-CO) has never publicly professed a religious affiliation.

[a.kitman]

If you think that fetuses are moral people then you cannot also believe that it's okay to kill them based on the circumstances of their conception. Not only is what Mourdock said reasonable, but had he said something different it wouldn't have been.

But you can kill them if the mothers life is threatened?

[regexcellent]

That's just a matter of saving one life out of two instead of zero.

[a.kitman]

No its not.

[regexcellent]

How is it not?

[snoopy369]

But you can kill them if the mothers life is threatened?

That one is a much more interesting moral question, IMO. Arguing abortion for rape victims (presupposing a fetus being alive, without which you shouldn't be having any of these arguments) is simply a matter of arguing life vs. quality of life (which is a long argument with no clear victor, certainly); arguing abortion when the mother will likely/certainly die, separately with a surviving/not surviving fetus, is much more morally complex. It brings in a lot of other questions, such as the morality of experimentation and such, which are also interesting, and worth considering - yet rarely/never discussed.

[MrFun]

I do not think embryos, and to some extent, fetuses, are people.

[snoopy369]

I do not think embryos, and to some extent, fetuses, are people.

That's fine, and a very reasonable statement. But it is, also, a very reasonable statement to say that you think they are people. Whether an embryo at any given stage of development is alive is a matter of definition of the word 'alive'; it's not something science has a definitive answer to. Many use 'conscious' or some shortcut for that to define alive; but my grass is alive by the common definition, yet it's certainly not conscious at any point.

This is where I think the pro-choice side is simply wrong; they write off the pro-life argument as unreasonable, when it's not. It might be incorrect depending on your point of view or beliefs, but it's not unreasonable. There's no magical line that indicates 'life' versus 'not life', scientifically; even viruses might be "alive" or "not alive" depending on who you ask. "Alive" could mean sentient, or conscious, or capable of producing a complete human being, or something else. That's really up to you - but it's not okay to simply write the other definition as 'unreasonable' when it clearly is an entirely reasonable definition. It's a bad debating strategy, nothing more, and something I'd hope the 'intellectual' side would be above.

[-Jrabbit]

If you think that fetuses are moral people then you cannot also believe that it's okay to kill them based on the circumstances of their conception. Not only is what Mourdock said reasonable, but had he said something different it wouldn't have been.

So I'm sure Mourdock is against the death penalty as well, life being so sacred and all.

[kentonio]

As usual, my friend Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post nails it:

..Who bears the consequences of horrible acts?..

.

This right here is the part that matters, and why it has nothing to do with philisophical word games. We're talking about real women potentially being forced to undergo hugely traumatic events simply because of one group of peoples religious beliefs.

That one is a much more interesting moral question, IMO.

For women who have just been raped, this is not a matter of interesting moral questions, it's about the most fundamental abuse of their bodies and minds.

[a.kitman]

But it is, also, a very reasonable statement to say that you think they are people.

There is over 1 million abortion per year in the US alone. How can people that think life starts at conception sleep at night? Lets say we rounded up and killed 1 millon unemployed per year. I bet thos pro-lifers wouldnt just stand around and debate the legality of it.

[Jon Miller]

For a baby who is murdered, it is not just a matter of an interesting moral question, it's about the most fundamental abuse of their bodies and minds.

Generally considered more significant than that of rape...

JM