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On Monday, Romney released a TV advertisement endorsing Mourdock -- the only such video he has cut for a Senate campaign since being nominated as the Republican presidential standard-bearer.

Mourdock has tried to walk back his remarks to some extent while defending his hard-line anti-abortion views. "Are you trying to suggest that somehow I think God ordained or pre-ordained rape? No, I don't think that anyone could suggest that. That's a sick, twisted -- no, that's not even close to what I said," he told reporters immediately following the debate, according to the Evansville Courier & Press.

"It is a fundamental part of my faith that God gives us life. God determines when life begins," Mourdock said. "I believe in an almighty God who makes those calls. ... There are some things in life that are above my pay grade."

The Romney campaign has tried to distance itself from the Indiana conservative without alienating its own base, which has left it in the awkward position of disavowing Mourdock's views without in any way stepping away from him. "Gov. Romney disagrees with Richard Mourdock, and Mr. Mourdock's comments do not reflect Gov. Romney's views," Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul said. "We disagree on the policy regarding exceptions for rape and incest but still support him."

Summarizing the views of many frustrated pro-choice women, comedian Tina Fey told an audience at a benefit for the Center for Reproductive Rights Wednesday night: "if I have to listen to one more gray-faced man with a two-dollar haircut explain to me what rape is, I'm gonna lose my mind!"

While the Democrats push the issue to turn out pro-choice women -- President Obama tweeted about it three times Wednesday and told Jay Leno "I don't know how these guys come up with these ideas.... rape is rape," then returned to the topic Thursday in remarks and in tweets (at right) -- and the Romney campaign stands by its anti-abortion man out of its own need for the anti-abortion base to turn out on November 6, it's worth taking a step back to examine what it is we're really talking about and why it is that rape and abortion have become such flashpoints during campaign 2012.

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Coerced and not entirely voluntary mating have occurred throughout human history. I had a friend many years ago whose mother was a prize of war in a national conflict; it made for complicated family dynamics. But one sees rape, forced marriage and war go hand in hand throughout the ages, including our own; it is another form of conquest to create the next generation in your image from the bodies of the conquered. Violating women is a way of subjugating a population -- sowing fear among the women, blocking the men from access to the future, and rupturing and weakening all the social bonds that made up the society that fought and lost. But for this to work there must also be children of rape. "If one group wants to control another they often do it by impregnating women of the other community because they see it as a way of destroying the opposing community," former head of the Gender Unit at Amnesty International Gita Sahgal has explained. Women must learn to love the image of their conquerors written in the faces of the children they suckle, and to despise themselves, and their weakness. If captives come to identify with those who hold them, it is only a tale as old as our ability to survive by orienting our beings around whoever has power over us.