Our guest blogger is Sally Steenland, Director of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock (R-IN) outraged millions of American women and men when he said in a debate last night that rape pregnancies are “a gift from God” and that women who become pregnant from rape should be denied abortion care.

Mourdock’s views are harsh and extremist — and they represent an attempt to impose his unforgiving theological views on millions of Americans who hold very different beliefs. Religious leaders, including clergy and faith experts at CAP’s Faith and Reproductive Justice Institute, are weighing in to condemn his views:

“Rape is an act of overt personal violence and an egregious abuse of power that the God I believe in does not sanction. A woman who is faced with a pregnancy from such a traumatic attack on her body and soul must have all options available to her when deciding whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, including the right granted to her by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 to a safe and legal abortion.” — Rev. Elizabeth Barnum, United Church of Christ minister serving in Rhode Island

“As a Christian pastor, I am deeply offended by Indiana Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock’s claim that the God of compassion and justice would re-victimize a survivor of sexual violence. To believe that God would choose to impose a pregnancy on someone whose most basic bodily agency has been violated is to completely misunderstand God’s agency for those most in need. Scripture commands us: Do not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, and the idea that God would “gift” a survivor of rape with a pregnancy is exactly that. It’s blasphemy.” — Rev. Matthew Westfox, Associate Pastor of All Souls Bethlehem Church in Brooklyn, NY, and Director of Interfaith Outreach for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

“As a pastor who has counseled hundreds of women regarding unintended pregnancies, including women who have suffered awful violence in their lives, I was both saddened and horrified hearing the callousness of Richard Mourdock’s words. How could his heart be so hard? God compels us towards acts of profound justice, compassion, and peace. God calls us to be in caring relationships with those who have suffered the most in this world. We are to bear witness and listen, mindful to not let our arrogance and hubris lead us astray.” — Rev. Darcy Baxter, Director of Family Ministries, Starr King Unitarian Universalist Church, Hayward, CA

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Even though President Obama signed into law the Food Safety Modernization Act — giving the Food and Drug Administration wider power to stop foodborne illness outbreaks before they start — the number of Americans who become sick or die because of contaminated food has increased 44 percent over the last two years, according to a new report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

This adds up to about 48 million people getting sick. But Republicans have threatened to defund the law that helps curb salmonella outbreaks. Meanwhile, the FDA remains unable to implement the reforms because of underfunding:

But while some parts of the law have been enacted, the vast majority of the law’s regulatory framework remains in limbo, sitting in the White House Office of Management and Budget, with no clear timetable for implementation.

“In February, the president’s budget requested $4.5 billion for the Food and Drug Administration. But budget proposals in both the Senate and the House fall below this target, coming in $600 (million)-$700 million below full funding, which the Office of Management and Budget has called ‘harmful’ to food safety regulations,” the Public Interest Research Group says. [...]

Instead of improving, the problem of foodborne outbreaks is getting worse, the report says.

“When comparing 2010 infection incidences with national health objective targets … the only incidence rate that meets the target goal was the incidence of infection with E. coli O157,” the report says. “The incidence of salmonella was three times the 2010 national health objective target, which is especially alarming, as salmonella causes the majority of hospitalizations and deaths from foodborne disease.”

The problem is not limited to U.S. food suppliers, and in its report, the Public Interest Research Group adds that the FDA can’t keep up with demand. About two-thirds of the fruits and vegetables that Americans eat come from foreign food suppliers, but the FDA only inspected 153 of the 189,000 registered foreign food facilities.

As the regulations to inspect food suppliers remain underfunded, the federal government has outsourced much of its food inspection to responsibilities to third-party companies that aren’t transparent, have no oversight, and have approved food that sickened thousands of people. Consequently, more Americans will continue to get sick from tainted foods like peanut butter, meat, and cantaloupe.

A Pennsylvania House bill seeks to limit the amount of TANF assistance that low-income women receive based on the amount of children they give birth to while covered under the program.

Despite the fact that low-income women who give birth to children would logically need increased assistance to care for their larger family, Pennsylvania lawmakers — State Reps. RoseMarie Swanger (R), Tom Caltagirone (D), Mark Gillen (R), Keith Gillespie (R), Adam Harris (R), and Mike Tobash (R) — don’t want their state’s welfare program to provide additional benefits for that newborn. If a woman gives birth to a child who was conceived from rape, she may seek an exception to this rule so that her welfare benefits aren’t slashed, but only if she can provide proof that she reported her sexual assault and her abuser’s identity to the police:

In determining the amount of assistance payments to a recipient family of benefits under the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) Program, the department shall revise the schedule of benefits to be paid to the recipient family by eliminating the increment in benefits under the program for which that family would otherwise be eligible as a result of the birth of a child conceived during the period in which the family is eligible for benefits under the TANF Program. [...]

Elimination of benefits under subsection (d) shall not apply to any child conceived as a result of rape or incest if the department: (1) receives a non-notarized, signed statement from the pregnant woman stating that she was a victim of rape or incest, as the case may be, and that she reported the crime, including the identity of the offender, if known, to a law enforcement agency having the requisite jurisdiction or, in the case of incest where a pregnant minor is the victim, to the county child protective service agency and stating the name of the law enforcement agency or child protective service agency to which the report was made and the date such report was made.

The language of the bill goes on to note that a sexual assault victim applying for an exemption will be required to sign a statement affirming she understands that “false reports to law enforcement authorities are punishable by law,” and stipulates that Pennsylvania will report any “evidence of false statements or fraud” to the correct department, all the way up to the Attorney General’s office.

Aside from punishing women who have children — particularly low-income women who may not have reliable access to affordable contraception — the proposed bill perpetrates a dangerous attitude toward survivors of sexual assault. Forcing women to prove the legitimacy of their sexual assault, and warning them about the serious consequences of “crying rape” to cheat the system, puts forth the misguided assumption that victims of sexual violence are not to be believed. Furthermore, countless women choose not to report their rapists to the police because they fear repercussions from their abusers, who could threaten their lives. An estimated 54 percent of sexual assaults are not reported to the authorities.

This is not the first type of legislation of its kind. Last month, New Mexico proposed a bill that would have required women seeking childcare assistance to prove they were “forcibly raped,” although Gov. Susana Martinez (R) has requested to remove that language.

(HT: Donnie Johnson)

Last month, the Hobby Lobby craft chain sued for the right to deny their employees access to affordable contraceptive services through their insurance plans. The company’s conservative Christian owners claim that the Obamacare provision that requires employer-based insurance plans to provide contraception without a co-pay is a violation of their religious conscience, although several Christian groups protested against the owners’ decision to prioritize their own religious beliefs over the beliefs of the tens of thousands of people that Hobby Lobby employs.

Now, the federal government is weighing in, urging a district judge to deny Hobby Lobby’s request to exempt themselves from the health reform law’s birth control provision. According to the Associated Press, U.S. government attorneys maintain that “Hobby Lobby cannot claim to exercise religion in an effort to avoid laws designed to regulate commercial activity.”

Hobby Lobby was the first commercial business to file a lawsuit against Obamacare, although it is certainly not alone in its legal challenge of the health reform law’s contraception mandate. Over 100 plaintiffs representing right-wing Christians institutions, particularly Catholic- and Protestant-affiliated universities, have filed over 35 lawsuits against Obamacare’s birth control provision, although several have already been dismissed because they cannot provide enough evidence of religious discrimination. In fact, Obamacare already provides an religious accommodation that shifts the cost of birth control onto insurance companies so that religious institutions do not have to pay for contraceptive services that they oppose.

The majority of Americans, including a plurality of Catholics, believe that religiously-affiliated institutions should provide health plans that offer contraceptive coverage at no additional cost to their employees. Although Hobby Lobby’s owners are personally religious, the craft store is not officially affiliated with any organized religion.

Since January 2011, Obamacare has prohibited insurers from denying coverage to children younger than 19 with pre-existing conditions. The measure is one of the health law’s most popular consumer protections and among its first to be implemented, and by 2014, this same protection will be expanded to all Americans with pre-existing conditions.

But in the meantime, Obamacare’s staggered implementation timeline has led to some unintended consequences. Concerned that guardians might take advantage of the law’s protections and only purchase dependent coverage when a young dependent gets sick — consequently raising insurance costs and overall market premiums — many insurers stopped offering child-only health policies on the individual market.

Fortunately, a new Commonwealth Fund study finds that 22 states and the District of Columbia have taken steps to encourage providers to keep offering child-only policies until Obamacare takes full effect. As Kaiser Health News reports, the states have used various regulatory carrots and sticks to encourage insurers to maintain such plans, ranging from mandates to pre-defined enrollment periods, in an effort to protect this small but vulnerable insurance market:

The child-only policies, which were available in most states before the 2010 law, are sold on the individual insurance market for children younger than 19 who don’t have a parent or guardian covered under the same policy. It’s not a big market – roughly 10 percent of the individual policies sold, according to the report — but to those people who need the coverage, it can be critical.

Children whose parents’ coverage doesn’t include dependents sometimes need such policies, say children’s health advocates, as do children who are being raised by older parents or grandparents who are insured through Medicare.

States have taken different approaches to encourage insurers to sell child-only policies. Some required insurers to offer child-only policies if they want to sell other individual policies in the state. Some established specific enrollment periods to sign up for child-only policies, to discourage parents from waiting until a child needs coverage to buy it. Still others established reinsurance mechanisms that compensate insurers if they incur high costs covering high-risk kids.

By the time that the rest of Obamacare’s provisions take effect, these kinds of insurance dilemmas will be a thing of the past, as all Americans will be required to have affordable coverage and no insurance companies will be able to discriminate against those with pre-existing conditions. With a vastly expanded pool of healthy Americans to mitigate any potential risk from the ill, insurers will no longer have incentives to pull out of certain markets.

Yesterday, a 22-year-old woman kicked an anti-abortion protester’s sign as she made her way into an Oregon-area Planned Parenthood clinic, and the protester pushed her in response. The woman returned with her father, who instigated a physical confrontation with the protester — later identified as 54-year-old Christopher R. Tolhurst — which resulted in Tolhurst repeatedly stabbing the man. The Oregonian reports that he remains in the hospital recovering from seven stab wounds to the abdomen.

A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood for Southwestern Oregon explained to the Associated Press that the clinic that inspired the violent confrontation only provides health services, such as contraception and cancer screenings, and doesn’t perform any abortion services. Nevertheless, residents of the neighborhood confirmed that Tolhurst regularly harasses the clients who visit the health clinic:

Neighbor Charlotte Cook said the protester would accost people coming and going through the area.

“It was an accident looking for a place to happen,” she said.

Cherie Adams said he would yell obscenities at her when she walked past him, and she changed her route to work.

“He’s been out there for months,” she said. “He’s screaming at people. I had a feeling something like this would happen.”

Over the past two decades, violent anti-abortion harassment has been on the rise, and some studies have suggested the problem is exacerbated by restrictive anti-abortion legislation that may encourage right-wing protesters’ fervor. Earlier this month, repeated harassment at a New York City health clinic forced it to stop providing abortion services altogether. To help mitigate the potentially damaging effects of harassment at abortion clinics, New York City has just launched a clinic escort program to help ensure women can safely walk past anti-abortion protesters and enter reproductive health clinics.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Indiana Senate nominee Richard Mourdock (R) doesn’t just want to prevent women who have been raped from obtaining an abortion; he also doesn’t think they should be able to access affordable birth control through their health insurance that could prevent such a pregnancy.

Months before Mourdock commented last night that pregnancies resulting from rape are a “gift” that “God intended,” ThinkProgress spoke with him at the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference about Rick Santorum’s belief that insurance plans shouldn’t cover birth control at all. When asked whether he agreed with Santorum on the matter, Mourdock replied: “I do, I do.”

KEYES: I know Rick Santorum in his speech was talking a lot about this. He even went so far as to say, “I don’t think insurance plans should be covering birth control in the first place.” Do you think he’s right about that?

MOURDOCK: I do, I do. I don’t think that’s the role of government. We have to start rolling back government. There are many issues out there beyond Obamacare, but really the issue overlying everything is, is this nation going to survive? And that ultimately becomes an issue of economics.

Watch it:

Santorum’s argument goes well beyond the standard GOP opposition to the new Obamacare directive that insurance companies are required to provide contraceptive care without a co-pay. Instead, Santorum reasoned, insurance companies shouldn’t cover birth control at all, regardless of co-pay, because as he said, contraception is a “relatively small expenditure” that women shouldn’t “need insurance for.” In fact, women spend about 68 percent more than men do on their out-of-pocket health care expenses, partly because of the high cost of contraceptive services, and one in three women has reported struggling to afford birth control at some point in their lives.

Earlier this week, Mitt Romney starred in an ad for Mourdock, asking voters to “join me in supporting Richard Mourdock for U.S. Senate.” Romney has not cut an ad for any other Senate candidates in the general election.

On Tuesday night, during a debate with challenger Joe Donnelly (D-IN), State Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R) said that women who had been raped should not have access to abortion services, explaining that pregnancies resulting from the violent act are a “gift from God.”

“The only exception I have for to have an abortion is in the case of the life of the mother,” Mourdock claimed. “I struggled with myself for a long time but I came to realize life is that gift from God, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape. It is something that God intended to happen. “

Sadly, Mourdock — who Mitt Romney endorsed just days ago — is one of a growing number of (mostly) male Republicans who are seeking to roll back women’s access to legal abortion services, particularly in cases of rape:

– REP. TODD AKIN (R-MO): “It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

– REP. STEVE KING (R-IA): In an interview with Iowa’s KMEG-TV, King denied ever hearing about anyone getting pregnant from statutory rape or incest, saying: “Well I just haven’t heard of that being a circumstance that’s been brought to me in any personal way, and I’d be open to discussion about that subject matter.”

– REP. ROSCOE BARTLETT (R-MD): At a town hall, Bartlett responded to a question about abortion by reiterating his longstanding opposition to the procedure in every case except for rape, incest, and if the life of the woman is in danger. But when an audience member pressed Bartlett on the rape exception, he suggested that few pregnancies result from rape.

– LINDA MCMAHON: the Connecticut senate hopeful told a local newspaper that Catholic hospitals should not be required to provide emergency contraception to victims of rape. “I mean it’s a separation of church and state in my view, and I think that a religious institution has the right to decide what its policies would be in that, in that case,” she claimed. She later reversed herself.

– TOM SMITH: the Republican challenging Sen. Bob Casey’s (D-PA) seat, suggested that having a child out of wedlock was analogous to rape during an interview with a reporter at a press club this afternoon, claiming that it would have a “similar” effect on a father.

– STATE REP. ROGER RIVARD (R-WI): the state lawmakers, who also won Paul Ryan’s backing, claimed that some girls “rape easy” and sometimes portray a sexual encounter as rape if they become pregnant.

– STATE REP. JIM BUCHY (R-OH): admitted that never thought about why a woman would want an abortion. After an Al Jazeera reporter asked Buchy why he thinks some women may want to have an abortion, he fumbled for an appropriate response before admitting he had never thought about that question before.

Indeed, the radical attitude about abortion — and particularly the dangerous move to narrow the definition of sexual assault and qualify the types of violent sexual crimes that are “legitimate” enough to warrant an abortion — extends throughout the Republican Party and its presidential ticket.

The 2012 GOP platform calls for a ban on all abortions without even the narrowest of exceptions, such as in cases of rape and incest. Romney claims that the procedure should remain legal if the life of the woman is in danger or if she had been raped or a victim of incest, though he has previously lent his support to a state personhood amendment that would endow fertilized eggs with the rights of humans and restrict abortion in all cases. During a 2007 GOP primary debate, Romney also said he would be “delighted” to sign a bill outlawing all abortions.

Ryan too has backed a federal personhood measure and supported legislation (along with at least 68 House Republicans) seeking to prevent Medicaid recipients who are raped from obtaining an abortion unless they can prove they are victims of “forcible rape.” Since his first House campaign in 1998, Ryan also claimed that abortion should be illegal except for “cases in which a doctor deems an abortion necessary to save the mother’s life.”