The Rape Exemption

Gail Collins in her Saturday column for NYT looks at What's Up, Mourdock in Indiana.   But she's not nuts about his opponent either:  "When it comes to abortion, both Mourdock and his Democratic opponent, Representative Joe Donnelly, are anti-choice. But, unlike Mourdock, Donnelly makes an exception in the case of rape or incest. One of the truly disturbing parts of our current politics is that we have begun to identify people who want to impose their religious beliefs on millions of women who don’t share them as moderates as long as they’re O.K. with the rape exemption."

The real moral of the Mourdock flap isn’t about giving rape victims special dispensation, or whether it’s offensive to say that you believe even sexual assaults are part of God’s plan. It’s the one President Obama came up with: “This is exactly why you don’t want a bunch of politicians, mostly male, making decisions about women’s health care.”