The religious right has bored their way into the soul of the GOP so deep that Republican politicians can no longer believe that rape, incest or the health of the mother is a strong enough reason for an abortion. Hey ladies, if you will die over a troubled pregnancy or if a psycho rapist/family member gets a teenage girl pregnant, it's too bad. What's almost as shocking is that the beltway media treat these positions as completely natural and couldn't be bothered commenting on them.

This topic was front and center in the first 2016 GOP presidential Primary debate and Marco Rubio was forced to backtrack on his own legislative record to kowtow to the religious zealots, that he's so proudly clings to.

KELLY: Senator Rubio, you favor a rape and incest exception to abortion bans. Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York just said yesterday those exceptions are preposterous. He said they discriminate against an entire class of human beings. If you believe that life begins at conception, as you say you do, how do you justify ending a life just because it begins violently, through no fault of the baby?

RUBIO: Well, Megyn, first of all, I’m not sure that that’s a correct assessment of my record. I would go on to add that I believe all–

KELLY: You don’t favor a rape and incest exception?

RUBIO: I have never said that. And I have never advocated that. What I have advocated is that we pass law in this country that says all human life at every stage of its development is worthy of protection.

In fact, I think that law already exists. It is called the Constitution of the United States.

(APPLAUSE)

RUBIO: And let me go further. I believe that every single human being is entitled to the protection of our laws, whether they can vote or not. Whether they can speak or not. Whether they can hire a lawyer or not. Whether they have a birth certificate or not. And I think future generations will look back at this history of our country and call us barbarians for murdering millions of babies who we never gave them a chance to live.

Marco Rubio must have forgotten that he cosponsored the exact legislation that Megyn Kelly said he did. Too bad she didn't follow up on him against his lies as forcefully as she did Donald Trump.

...was a cosponsor on the Senate’s Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, introduced in 2013. The bill would have prohibited abortion except in certain circumstances, including if “the pregnancy is the result of rape, or the result of incest against a minor.” The legislation would have also included an exception if the woman’s life was at risk.

If Rubio were to make it through the GOP debate gauntlet and come out as the nominee, there is no way women will take kindly to his extreme pro-life positions. Being pro-life is one thing, but advocating for the death of a mother or forcing a girl to give birth to her rapist's' baby is quite another matter entirely.

Scott Walker also said the life of a mother had no bearing on his views of abortion. Good luck with that in the general.

UPDATE: Digby Writes:

It's been a long time coming and those who track this issue closely have been sounding the alarm for a while. Presidential candidates for one of America's two major parties are explicitly saying that a fetus is more important than the live woman inside whom it is gestating. If they had to choose, they would not choose the woman.

I don't know how they can make their misogyny more obvious. Whatever reverence they have for fetuses is equalled by their disdain for women as anything but human sacrifices.

"A courageous woman who decided to protect her unborn baby" --- by choosing to die. That was her choice and her right, of course. But it's a choice these people don't want anyone else to have the right to make. Indeed, they are fetishizing the deaths of women like this as medieval martyrs. It's sick.

The lesson here is that anyone who takes their rights for granted is a fool. It's all well and good to say "it's over" and now we can put all that unpleasantness behind us. But we are dealing with primal issues here and they do not change easily. Don't ever assume that we can't