Rape is a big issue this election season. Not what we were expecting, but, these days, American voters are prepared to deal with pretty much anything.

This week, all eyes turned to a United States Senate debate in Indiana — also something we were not really planning on doing. Richard Mourdock, the Republican candidate, caused a national stir when he defended his across-the-board opposition to abortion by saying that a pregnancy caused by rape “is something that God intended to happen.”

When it comes to abortion, both Mourdock and his Democratic opponent, Representative Joe Donnelly, are anti-choice. But, unlike Mourdock, Donnelly makes an exception in the case of rape or incest. One of the truly disturbing parts of our current politics is that we have begun to identify people who want to impose their religious beliefs on millions of women who don’t share them as moderates as long as they’re O.K. with the rape exemption.

There are plenty of reasons that a sensible Hoosier would not want to have Mourdock as a senator. He’s a Tea Party favorite who toppled the longtime incumbent, Senator Richard Lugar, in a primary, during which he said that his definition of bipartisanship was “Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.” As state treasurer, he sued to stop the Obama administration’s rescue of Chrysler, a company that is directly or indirectly responsible for about 100,000 jobs in Indiana.