Herman Cain is incredibly pro-life and doesn't personally believe that it should be allowed in special cases like rape or incest. And yet his attempts to soften the edges of this rigid position are creating, for him, a miserable self-induced error that Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are loving. Cain makes it worse each time he brings it up! What dumb new "tweak" did he unveil today?

To recap: Cain was last caught off guard when Piers Morgan pressed him on his personal opposition to legal abortion even in pregnancies from rape and incest. But what if it was your granddaughter who was raped? Piers pressed, in one of those classic media asshole questions. Would you "honestly want her to bring up that baby as her own"? Cain, who likely figured that blurting out "YES!" might come off a touch dissonant, instead started rambling about how tough these decisions are and it's really only a small number of cases and, well, the government should get out of people's lives, because the government is bad? He had know idea what he was babbling about. And all the social conservatives heard was "it's not the government's role or anybody else's role to make that decision" — a sentiment they strongly share for most political issues, except those involving women's bodies and gay people touching each other.

So here's how Cain attempted to patch things up today, and it's incredible:

Cain attempted to argue that when he said in a CNN interview earlier this week that the decision was ultimately up to the family, what he really meant was that it was up the family as to whether they wanted to break the law.

"I do not think abortion should be legal in this country," Cain said on Fox today. "Abortion should not be legal. That is clear. But if a family made the decision to break the law, that's that family's decision."

It's not a *policy position* to say that humans have free will. If the "family" — is the family collectively pregnant, by the way? —makes a decision, then the family has made a decision, which is its family decision. This doesn't give much credit to the idea of laws as a guiding force. There'll be a law there, sure, but if you want to take a stroll down to the black market or coathanger alley, then stroll away!

This is far too confusing for a Friday afternoon. Herman Cain! Just say: "I AM PRO-LIFE. NO ABORTIONS EVER. THEY WILL NOT HAPPEN."

[Image via AP]