Republicans still talking about rape, for some reason

[Simfan34]

Republicans are clearly not making the smart political move here. You don't win in politics by explaining or defending.  Strategically, Republicans need to lay low on abortion for a while because they can't make any headway arguing this point. 

But, it's not totally fair to take Republican to task for discussing this.  If you take the following positions, you have to talk about rape to be honest in your position.
1. Pro-life with an exception for rape
2. Pro-life with an exception for only forcible rape
3. Pro-life, no exceptions.

Those positions necessarily require a working definition of rape, a frank discussion of the morals and consequences of your position.  That discussion is uncomfortable for most people and it's easy to paint these out of touch 60 year old conservative men as clueless and sexist.  But, Republicans are in no way pro-rape or across the board "anti-woman" because they discuss uncomfortable topics.

To put a finer point on it, we ought to discuss these tough moral questions and hypothetical scenarios about rape.  If we don't dig into these debates we just end up with this static conversation between the pro-lifers and pro-choicers as if they were football teams.  To me, the whole rape discussion demonstrates that sex and reproduction are very individually contextual moral issues.  Because the issues are so personal and contextual, the insight may be that legislatures are the wrong decision-makers; women are the right decision makers.

Bravo, bravo!