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By JAMES TARANTO

With less than two weeks to go before the election, the left is anxious to talk about abortion, and you can see why. To be sure, Gallup found in May that Americans are considerably likelier to describe themselves as “pro-life” than “pro-choice” (50% to 41%), so it hardly seems a winning issue. But it’s likely less of a losing one than President Obama’s economic and foreign-policy record.

Gallup also found that 77% thought abortion should be legal at least “under certain” circumstances, whereas only 20% thought it should be “illegal in all” circumstances. Thus pro-abortion liberal Democrats are ever on the lookout for Republican office-seekers who seem to be among that 20%, in hopes of winning votes from the plurality who are “pro-life” but with qualifications.

Such an opportunity arose in Indiana last night, in a debate between Richard Mourdock, the GOP candidate for U.S. Senate, and his Democratic opponent, Rep. Joe Donnelly. Mourdock was asked the hypothetical question of whether it should be legal to abort a child conceived in rape. National Review’s Katrina Trinko quotes his answer: “I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

Inevitably Mourdock has been likened to Rep. Todd Akin, the Missouri Senate nominee, who was disowned by most fellow Republicans after he attempted to answer the question in August. Trinko rejects the comparison:

I’m not sure why Mourdock thought it would be helpful to bring up God in this context; personally, as someone pro-life and religious, I think when talking about something as painful as pregnancy in the case of rape, it’s best to talk about how the unborn child is a human being, regardless of the horrific circumstances of conception, and leave aside politically irrelevant speculation about what God does and doesn’t do.

But nor do I see his comment being equal to Akin’s. Akin, asked about abortion in the cases of rape, responded, “If it’s legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” That comment was offensive because it implied there was illegitimate rape, and suggested (erroneously) that almost never would a raped woman become pregnant.

Republicans seem to agree. Although some, including Mitt Romney, have made clear they do not share Mourdock’s view, the Hill reports that Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, is vigorously defending him. Cornyn was quick to drop Akin.

Associated PressHe’s not Akin.

Is Mourdock’s comment less offensive than Akin’s? Probably, though it is a subjective question. Some may be offended by what they see as Mourdock’s presumptuousness in inferring God’s will–or by his mentioning God at all. And in our neighborhood at least, there are lots of people who are offended that anyone, especially a man, would disagree with their opinion on abortion.

As an analytical matter, however, Mourdock’s statement is entirely defensible, whereas Akin’s is sophistry. And it turns out that Mourdock’s Democratic opponent, in seeking to capitalize on the remark, is engaging in Akin-style sophistry.

Mourdock gave a straightforward and thoughtful answer, if an impolitic one, to the question that was posed, one that made clear he appreciates its (albeit only hypothetical) moral gravity. Akin, by contrast, attempted to avoid the question by arguing that it was irrelevant.

That argument was unsound because it was based on an unfounded empirical premise, one that is generally understood to be false–namely that rape never causes pregnancy, or does so with such infrequency as to constitute a negligible problem. (There is some evidence, though it is far from conclusive, that this is the opposite of the truth: As the Washington Post reported in August, “one provocative study” in 2003 “found that a single act of rape was more than twice as likely to result in pregnancy than [sic] an act of consensual sex.”)

Largely lost amid the hubbub over Akin’s Orwellian phrase “legitimate rape” was its logical centrality to his flawed argument. He evidently knew there were counterexamples that would disprove his premise, so he resorted to the “No-True-Scotsman Move,” described by the philosopher Anthony Flew in his 1975 book, “Thinking About Thinking: Or, Do I Sincerely Want to Be Right?“:

Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about how the “Brighton Sex Maniac Strikes Again.” Hamish is shocked and declares that “No Scotsman would do such a thing.” The next day he sits down to read his Glasgow Morning Herald again; and, this time, finds an article about an Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton sex maniac seem almost gentlemanly. This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion but is he going to admit this? Not likely. This time he says, “No true Scotsman would do such a thing.” . . .

The No-true-Scotsman Move . . . is an attempt to evade falsification: a piece of sleight of mind replaces a logically contingent by a logically necessary proposition.

In Akin’s formulation, the fact of pregnancy rules out the possibility of a “legitimate rape,” thus disposing of the whole difficult question by pretending through “sleight of mind” that it does not exist.

Donnelly, seeking to capitalize on the kerfuffle, “put out a statement attacking Mourdock,” the Hill reports:

“I think rape is a heinous and violent crime in every instance,” Donnelly said in the statement. “The God I believe in and the God I know most Hoosiers believe in does not intend for rape to happen–ever. What Mr. Mourdock said is shocking, and it is stunning that he would be so disrespectful to survivors of rape.”

Donnelly is engaging in some sleazy innuendo here. Mourdock’s assertion about what “God intended” clearly referred to conception (“when life begins”), not rape.

But what’s interesting about Donnelly’s statement is that he claims to agree with Mourdock’s central premises: that God exists, and that unborn children are a human being worthy of legal protection (or, as the Hill puts it, Donnelly “is also against abortion rights”). Donnelly differs from Mourdock only in reaching the opposite conclusion on the specific question of a rape exception.

That position could be coherently defended on various grounds. One might, for example, conceive of abortion in such cases as akin to justifiable homicide. Or one might offer a purely pragmatic argument: that abortion is wrong in all cases, but only a law with such exceptions is politically attainable.

Donnelly, however, is as dismissive of the question as Akin. He professes a belief in God yet appears never to have grappled with the problem of evil. Surely “the God . . . most Hoosiers believe in” is omniscient, yet he is somehow AWOL, in Donnelly’s theodicy, anytime a woman is raped.

As a matter of practical politics, this may sink Richard Mourdock–though on this subject, we are particularly skeptical of the instincts of coastal elites, including our own. Middle American attitudes toward abortion are very different from those where we live. Even Akin has defied media predictions by keeping the Missouri race a “toss up” in the Senate rankings at RealClearPolitics.com and elsewhere.

But it does Mourdock an injustice to lump his thoughtful response to the question in with Akin’s specious one. And it would be a shame if Donnelly made it to the Senate by making an argument that is as unsound as Akin’s and demagogic to boot.