Richard Mourdock, GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in Indiana, said during a debate that when a woman gets pregnant from a rape, “it is something that God intended to happen.” What sanctimonious gibberish.

The White House said Mourdock’s outlook is “outrageous and demeaning to women.” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., scorned “Mourdock’s heinous views on rape.” …

Another Republican Senate nominee, Todd Akin of Missouri — who once was arrested while picketing women’s clinics — said a woman can’t become pregnant from a “legitimate rape” because her body repels the attacker’s sperm.

Why do right-wing male politicians keep making a political issue out of rape and sex? Why does conservative hostility to birth control and pregnancy termination keep jumping into the 2012 election campaign? It all smacks of old-fashioned Puritanism that should have faded long ago.

Rape is a grimly serious topic for millions of American women. More than 200,000 U.S. females over age 12 are assaulted each year, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network estimates. Many attacks aren’t fully completed. However, 64,000 complete rapes occurred in 2004-05, producing 3,200 pregnancies, the organization says.

“Each year, thousands of women become pregnant as the result of rape, and many more survivors are faced with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other long-term results of the crime,” RAINN declared.

The group says, “17.7 million American women have been victims of attempted or completed rape.”

Yet the 2012 Republican national platform opposes all abortions, with no exception for rape or incest. In other words, ravaged women should be forced to bear their attackers’ babies. …

Thank heaven, the election will be over soon, and maybe the war on women will fade from headlines.

— Distributed by The Associated Press