Invoking God

I actually have a much longer post about abortion and abortion rights in general.  For now, however, in light of Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's comments which were widely reported yesterday, I just want to make this observation.

In case anyone isn't aware, the staunchly anti-abortion Mourdock was asked about his position on allowing exceptions to an abortion ban in cases where the woman is pregnant as a result of rape.  His response was that, even as horrible as rape is, pregnancy is a gift from God and that "God intended it."  Many people, of course, took this to mean that he believed God intended for the woman to be raped and impregnated.  He vigorously defended himself in the inevitable fallout, explaining that God did not intend the rape, but that however it starts, life is a divine gift.

The overall idea that life in general is a gift to be treasured is, I daresay, not particularly controversial in and of itself.  The idea that an unwanted pregnancy resulting from a terrible crime is a gift is something else indeed.  There are individual women who feel this way, and would choose to carry a pregnancy to term even under these circumstances, and would believe that a child would help them cope.  For those women who feel that way, marvelous.  I applaud and admire that choice.  Let's give them all the support they need.  But frankly you'd have to admit that this would be a minority of women.  Most women would find living with a daily, physical, and physically demanding reminder of what happened to them to be not a gift but a monstrosity.  In the case of women whose rapes are the result of domestic violence, the pregnancies in a very real sense represent increased physical danger to them (please, click the link).  They don't need some ignorant blowhole suggesting that pregnancy in those situations is a gift from God about which they should be happy, instead of a very real and continuing tragedy in their lives.

Moreover, Mr. Mourdock's defense/justification doesn't make sense.  According to him, God intended the pregnancy, but didn't intend the rape.  Really?  How does that work, exactly?  The pregnancy is a some sort of consolation to make it up to them that they got raped?  The pregnancy part was intended all along but the rape part was an oversight?  How do you know that God meant one thing and not the other?  I suspect that upon repeated close questioning on this point, Mr. Mourdock would probably have to resort eventually to saying that as a mere human he can't begin to understand God's plan fully and that it isn't his place to question it.  That's perfectly acceptable, but then it really isn't his place to say that the pregnancy was God's plan in the first damn place.  If you aren't in a position to know exactly what God's plan is in all its permutations, then quite frankly you shouldn't attempt to impose your own half-formed vision of it on everyone else who might not share it.  Particularly when that vision has real and serious adverse consequences with which you don't have to live but someone else does.

This may come across as deriding people for their religious faith.  I absolutely am not.  What I am trying to point out is the problem with attempting to impose a "God's Plan" justification onto all of your own beliefs, especially when you want to require everyone else to live according to the same plan.  Anne Lamott once said, "You can be sure that you have created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do."  Across every religion and in every country, that is unquestionably true.  I believe the reverse is also true--people have a tendency to ascribe a lot of things to God as justification for believing what they do.  I'm not saying they're wrong.  But it's one thing to attribute this, that, or the other occurrence in your own life as part of God's plan for you.  You may be right.  It's hardly for me to say whether you are right or wrong.  I have my life's journey and you have yours.  But it's also not for anyone else to legislate what they think God's plan is onto other people who may quite rightly think God has other plans for them, and who don't share your vision.