"Pregnancy as a result of Rape is something that God intended to happen."

Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock 

"Pregnancy as a result of Rape is something that God intended to happen."

Republican Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock on Rape.

"The only exception I have to have an abortion is in the case of the life of the mother," said Mourdock, the Tea Party-backed state treasurer. "I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."

"Richard Mourdock's disturbing comment about rape is a window into Mourdock's extreme view of the world, " said Shripal Shah, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "Indiana can't afford to send a self-proclaimed 'zealot' and Tea Partier like Richard Mourdock to the Senate."

Romney policy is that there will be exceptions for rape.

Mitt Romney said Tuesday he has no plans to push for legislation limiting abortion, a softer stance from a candidate who has said he would "get rid of" funding for Planned Parenthood and appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade.

“There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda,” the Republican presidential nominee told The Des-Moines Register in an interview.

His comments to the Register could put him at odds with congressional Republicans who have made limiting abortion central to their messages. His own running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), has introduced bills to restrict access to abortion, and the Republican Party platform toughened its anti-abortion stance earlier this year.

 Ryan would confer legal rights on a fetus .

This August, Paul Ryan told a reporter, “ I've always adopted the idea, the position that, the method of conception does not change the definition of life,” Ryan said, referring to rape or incest. “But the Romney policy is that there will be exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother, and I think that is what people want to know, and I am comfortable with that because I think that’s a vast improvement to the status quot.”

Ryan has also supported so-called person-hood measures that would confer legal rights on a fetus (and thus potentially lead to the banning of all abortions). Last year, he cosponsored a federal bill that said that “each human life begins with fertilization, cloning or its functional equivalent, at which time every human has all legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of person-hood.”

Romney has never explicitly endorsed such a law, though he has said, as do many abortion foes, that he believes life begins at conception. Instead, his spokesman said in November 2011, “he believes these matters should be left up to states to decide.”

Pres. Obama made free contraception available for all women, which actually legislates and codifies “rare” in public policy. This is the seminal misunderstanding Republicans have about government power. They want to use state and federal power to force women to give birth, while Democrats under Pres. Obama want to utilize policy to make unwanted pregnancy not only rare, but obsolete.