Sherif Girgis: “Whatever one’s ultimate view of a rape exception to laws protecting the unborn, no remotely plausible case against such an exception could rest on assumptions about the mother (as Akin’s seems to do), rather than beliefs about the unborn child’s rights. Some social conservatives, including Mitt Romney, would allow an exception; others would not. But what all pro-lifers seek, and what Akin’s comments make harder to realize, is a world in which there is finally no zero-sum game between mothers’ needs and those of their unborn children; in which the equal dignity of every human being — including the smallest and weakest — isn’t premised on blaming or punishing women, or indeed on anything else, but shines by its own light, as a self-evident truth.”