It's inconceivable that in the 21st Century we'd be debating the archaic notion of torture in this country as if there was any question about whether it should be used. Now rape has entered the discourse, and there's a very specific reason why it's been so frequently crowbarred into this election cycle. Simply put, with a Romney/Ryan victory, the Republicans would absolutely move to overturn Roe v. Wade and ban abortions at the federal level, combining both a conservative Supreme Court with a constitutional amendment as their primary cudgels. The latter would define personhood as beginning at conception, offering full human rights to zygotes, embryos and fetuses irrespective of the circumstances surrounding the pregnancy, including rape. The former would surely endorse such a move.
This is the marquee election for the anti-choice movement. Anyone who can count and anyone who can look up the status of the Supreme Court justices knows full well that the next president will decide the fate of abortion rights and an entire array of issues.
Justice Scalia is 76 years old, Justice Breyer is 74 and Justice Ginsburg, well, she's a 79-year-old cancer survivor. It's almost a foregone conclusion that the next president will appoint a justice to replace at least Ginsburg, if not both Ginsburg and Scalia. Reasonably speaking, Ginsburg is almost certain. If she retires or passes, and Mitt Romney appoints her successor, the ideological balance of the Bench will shift to five conservatives, one swing vote (Kennedy) and three liberals -- more than enough to decide conservatively on a variety of critical issues. Even if Kennedy were to magically swing left on every decision, it still wouldn't matter. Conservatives would win the day for an entire generation. [continued]