Brownback bad for babies?

How can the most anti-abortion candidate on the Republican side be bad for the prolife movement? Here's why: At something called "the National Catholic Men's Conference" (staged by some group called St. Joseph's Covenant Keepers), he told a gathering of 500 or so men that abortion should be outlawed even in cases of rape and incest.

"Rape is terrible. Rape is awful. Is it made any better by killing an innocent child? Does it solve the problem for the woman that's been raped?" he asked, bring the crowd to its feet, according to the AP story.

Let's see: A man, telling 500 men, that a woman raped (by a man) should, by law rather than personal moral conviction, be prevented from avoiding conception or implantation (with the "morning after" pill) or terminating a pregnancy.

While it may make perfect sense from a particular moral perspective, it's a political disaster, and women especially by large majorities will reject it.

Of course, as some in the anti-abortion movement have learned, high-temperature rhetoric raises a lot of money, but in more than 30 years hasn't really made a dent in the abortion rate in this country. Advocating restrictions on already victimized women isn't going to either.