Todd Akin and 'legitimate rape'

The sad thing is, he'll probably win the election by making such statements.

Michelle wrote:

The sad thing is, he'll probably win the election by making such statements.

He's currently leading the incumbent by 8 points. Whether this hurts him, we shall see...

What does Todd Akin think "legitimate rape" is?

Perhaps most glaringly, there is “legitimate rape.” What is “illegitimate rape”? Akin offered some idea when he co-sponsored a bill that tried to change language about federal funding for abortions for victims of “rape” to cover only “forcible rape.” But his biological nonsense expands the question of what even that means. What is his picture of the sort of rape scenario that would cause the female body to “shut that whole thing down,” absent divine intervention? (And if that’s what the Congressman had in mind, it raises a whole other set of issues.) Does he think that all rapes unfold like abduction scenes in silent movies, with someone thrown over the shoulder, kicking and screaming, and that the violence somehow causes the machinery to go offline, or activates some hormonal force field? What about rape at gunpoint, when a woman’s best option for staying alive might be staying very still, and her best option for staying sane to be as detached as possible? Or does Akin think that doing what one could to survive would delegitimize the rape—or that a legitimate victim is one who sees rape as a fate worse than death? Is it fear that shuts that whole thing down, or disgust? Fear and sex and pregnancy are not strangers. What about someone who is twelve years old, or mentally incapacitated, or unconscious? The problem here is not just whether Akin thinks conception during rape is possible, but what he thinks rape is.

[T]here is a notion, common in conservative rhetoric lately, that desperation is always elsewhere, and that the crises in ordinary lives do not need to be contemplated or worried about—not by nice people. They are rare; something has gone wrong; maybe the complaint isn’t legitimate; maybe it’s their own fault. That indifference goes beyond the question of rape and abortion.

Maybe this guy is the origin of this theory. As said by Stephen Freind, former representative of Delaware County, in March 1988:

Quote:

In an abortion debate with Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union, Freind said, according to transcripts: "It is almost but not quite impossible to become pregnant on the basis of rape. The odds are one in millions and millions and millions. And there is a physical reason for that.

"Rape, obviously, is a traumatic experience. When that traumatic experience is undergone, a woman secretes a certain secretion, which has a tendency to kill sperm."

Informed of Freind's remarks, Dr. Luigi Mastroianni Jr., director of the division of human reproduction at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, said yesterday: "Boy, if I could find out what that (secretion) was, I'd use it as a contraceptive."

Mastroianni, who is also a past president of the American Fertility Society, added, "There is no such secretion."

He said Freind's statements were "scientifically unfounded" and "reflect a lack of concern for women who have been victimized by rape" by dismissing the act as not having consequence.

Dr. Richard Depp, chairman of the department of obstetrics and Gynecology at Thomas Jefferson University, said, "The only reality is that women get pregnant when they are ovulating."

Update: the Ryan-Romney campaign are distancing themselves from Akin's remarks:

Quote:

"Gov. Romney and Cong. Ryan disagree w/ Mr. Akin’s statement, and a Romney-Ryan adm would not oppose abortion in instances of rape."

And according to the LA Times, the Repuglies have cut off funding to Mr. Akin's campaign and are urging him to drop out.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-republican-establishment-pres...

Yes, apparently this is the last day to withdraw and have your name taken off the ballot. He's getting a lot of pressure to drop out. Even Ann Coulter has called for him to step aside and when Ann Coulter thinks you're too nutty, stupid and offensive, you know you really fucked up.

Sineed wrote:

The report on the CBC said that this notion of women's bodies rejecting feti conceived by rape has been going around conservative message boards. (I take their word for it; I didn't feel like looking.) I can see how such an idea would be needed by rabid anti-choice people, for whom rape conceptions are the Achilles heel of their whole rhetoric. In the past, such folks conceded that abortion would be allowed in cases of rape, but they nit-picked and whined, saying that women would make false accusations of rape in order to facilitate the termination of an unwanted pregnancy.

If you believe the earth is 6000 years old and people and dinosaurs coexisted, reinventing biology isn't much of a leap.

 

I've heard the theory bandied about before in nutjob circles. This article traces it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/us/politics/rape-assertions-are-dismis...

wtf?

"shut that whole thing down"

 is Akin 7 years old? he can't even use  descriptive words and has to call rape conception  "that"????????

he should be forced to cite his Dr sources and kicked the hell out.

Having been in Missouri last summer, I can heartily agree with Oldgoat

He'll probably do fine in Missouri

God Has Chosen to Bless

While Republicans at the national level were in a hurry to shove him aside, Republican opinion had not hardened against Mr. Akin in Missouri, in part because of the salience of the abortion issue. “The congressman is totally, firmly, solidly pro-life,” Sharon Barnes, a member of the state Republican central committee, said, adding that Mr. Akin believed “that abortion is never an option.”

Ms. Barnes echoed Mr. Akin’s statement that very few rapes resulted in pregnancy, adding that “at that point, if God has chosen to bless this person with a life, you don’t kill it.”

“That’s more what I believe he was trying to state,” she said. “He just phrased it badly.”

Ms. Barnes said that she believed that the controversy would blow over, and that once people in the state became more familiar with Mr. Akin, they would learn “what a great, conservative, godly man Todd Akin is, and they’ll put his comment in its proper context.”

 

Mr.Tea wrote:

Before he made his stupid comments, he was leading by 8 points. i don't think there's been any polling since but it will be interesting to see how far he drops.

Or rises.

PPP polls released on the 20th shows Akin leading 44-43, so we've gone from Probably Republican to Toss-Up. He hasn't withdrawn so we'll see where the race goes from here. 

Maysie wrote:

West Coast Greeny wrote:

... so we've gone from Probably Republican to Toss-Up...

I'm tossing something over here.

Issues of abortion ("not allowed ever") and rape ("never happens") have one thing in common. Conservative men wanting to control women's bodies and women's realities. Even if they have to make shit up. Welcome to the new normal for Republicans. Yikes.

 

 The sad thing is that it's not just conservative men. It's women too. Women like Ms. Barnes in one of the links I posted above.  The religious notions that inform them cross the gender line unfortunatly. 

Other things Missouri Representative Todd Akin Believes to Be True About The Uterus, Besides its Ability to "shut down" a legitimate rape.

Quote:

• When provoked or frightened, a uterus emits a high-pitched scream that instantly stuns its attacker.

....

• The touch of a uterus will blight and cripple the oak, the pine, and the larch for a generation. A cactus is impervious to the uterus' touch.

....

• A uterus cannot enter a public library or pass in front of a Wendy's during business hours.

....

• If trapped outside of a female body and unable to find food, a uterus is capable of living off of its own tissue for up to 80 days.

Hee hee heeeeeeeeee.

Akin issues another clarification. And I have to say, much as it behooves me to give Akin any credit, I think this time he got it right, striking the right balance between humility and genuine contrition and expressed with a resounding eloquence that borders on Churchillian:

Quote:

I Misspoke—What I Meant To Say Is 'I Am Dumb As Dog Shit And I Am A Terrible Human Being'

"As a politician, I often find myself in situations where, unfortunately, I express a certain thought or idea poorly, or find my words taken out of context...

You see, what I said was, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” But what I meant to say was, “I am a worthless, moronic sack of shit and an utterly irredeemable human being who needs to shut up and go away forever.”

It is clear to me now that I did not choose my words with care and did not get across the point I was trying to convey. In hindsight, I guess instead of using the words “legitimate rape,” I should have used the words “I am an unforgivable, unrepentant, and unconscionable subhuman dickhead.” Or better yet, “I am an evil, fucked-up man who should never have been elected to the United States Congress, and anyone who would vote for me is probably a pretty big fucking dumbshit, too.” See how much more sense that makes? It’s amazing how a few key word changes can totally alter the meaning of a statement.

<snip>

But if you actually go back and look at the remarks closely, you’ll see that what I was actually trying to convey in my statement was that

(1) I am a big fucking idiot,

(2) I am a nauseating slug of a human being who doesn’t deserve to live, and

(3) I am essentially everything that’s wrong with this country and with humanity in general.

Honestly, that’s all I was trying to get across there. It was a simple misunderstanding, really.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-misspokewhat-i-meant-to-say-is-i-am-d...

Another winner closer to home in New Hampshire!

He needs to go for a psychological testings as he should not be allowed anywhere near weapons.

http://www.wmur.com/news/politics/Sheriff-candidate-says-he-wouldn-t-rej...

The Republican Party has pulled all of their funding out of the race and Karl Rove's SuperPAC has pulled its millions of dollars in funding as well. I also can't imagine that donations are rolling in. So, what was set to be a cake walk to victory will now be a crushing defeat. All because they a) nominated a jackass as a candidate and b) once his idiocy was public, he insisted on staying in the race despite virtually his entire party telling him to get lost

tx. i cried. i think i 'm pretty uninformed but some of those YT comments show a deep lack in education or even basic awareness.

I luved the uterus bit. Already e-mailed it to some pals. The grannies are awesome, although, after 30 years of seeing them at demos I'm a little grannied out.

@quizzical: Ha!

West Coast Greeny wrote:

PPP polls released on the 20th shows Akin leading 44-43, so we've gone from Probably Republican to Toss-Up. He hasn't withdrawn so we'll see where the race goes from here.

That 8-point lead was probably a general sense of disillusionment with the party in power (which currently happens to be the Democrats, and remember that every election since 2006 has resulted in heavy losses for the party currently in power) but if the race has tightened, hopefully it means that people in Missouri are a bit more intelligent than we have given them credit for.