The latest political kerfuffle over rape and abortion has largely been swept away by Hurricane Sandy, but the US Senate candidate Richard Mourdock deserves at least a defence of his views on the subject. Remember, in a media interview he was asked what he believed about a pregnancy following rape. He said:

I’ve struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.

Immediately a storm of vituperation broke over his head, but his view that a life begun -- not the rape -- is something God intends has been defended ably on Public Discourse by Christopher Tollefsen, and in the video below by women who were conceived in rape.