Indiana Republican US Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock decided to underline his position on abortion at the final debate between him and Democratic Representative Joe Donnelly and Libertarian Andrew Horning. All three declared their opposition to abortion, but Mourdock declared that he opposes aborting a pregnancy conceived in rape because “it is something that God intended to happen.”

He further said “The only exception I have to have an abortion is in the case of the life of the mother. 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.”

Donnelly stated that “I believe in pro-life. I believe that life begins at conception. The only exceptions I believe in are for rape, incest and the life a mother.”

Horning simply declared that legalizing abortion should be a state matter and believes that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade was unconstitutional.

Former Governor Mitt Romney has endorsed Mourdock and even cut a campaign ad on his behalf. His campaign stated that “Gov. Romney disagrees with Richard Mourdock’s comments, and they do not reflect his views.”

Mourdock has tried to clarify his comments stating that God does not intend sexual assaults but that “God creates life, and that was my point. God does not want rape, and by no means was I suggesting that He does. Rape is a horrible thing, and for anyone to twist my words otherwise is absurd and sick.”

According to the Huffington Post:

Nevertheless, Democrats jumped on the comments as further proof that Murdock is an extremist.

“I think rape is a heinous and violent crime in every instance,” said Donnelly in his own statement. “The God I believe in and the God I know most Hoosiers believe in, does not intend for rape to happen — ever. What Mr. Mourdock said is shocking, and it is stunning that he would be so disrespectful to survivors of rape.”

“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.”

The notion that life begins at conception is not a Biblical idea. The idea dates back to the 1300′s and the rise of the belief that sperm contained homunkuli. The belief is that men carried in their sperm all the future humans that they could produce, and that women were little more than a fertile field in which to implant the ‘seeds’ in the sperm. What is more, men carried, at birth, only as many homonkuli as they would have. This accompanied the idea that ingesting of sperm was akin to cannibalism and masturbation akin to murder.

Monty Python parodied this idea in the song “Every Sperm Is Sacred”.