Missouri Congressman Todd Akin, a conservative Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, sparked a furor and earned a rebuke from Mitt Romney’s campaign after saying that women’s bodies can fight off pregnancy following “a legitimate rape,” and that conception is rare in such cases.
Akin, a six-term congressman running against incumbent Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill, was asked in an interview broadcast Sunday on St. Louis television station KTVI if he would support abortions for women who have been raped.
“It seems to me first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Akin said.
“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” Akin said of a rape victim’s chances of becoming pregnant.
Read the whole story at CBC.ca.
Using the adjective “legitimate” to describe a rape might imply (textually, anyway) that there are ok circumstances (i.e. legitimate circumstances) under which one might rape a woman.
But the ridiculousness of Akin’s adverbial choices aside, the views he holds are not held by him alone. A doctor named John C. Willke espouses this view and he served as the director of the US National Right to Life Committee in the 1980s. To say that he is a nutjob is, of course, understated. But nutjobs like him, and Akin, and others have no fear, in the US produced by the Culture Wars, of opening their mouths and spouting pure rubbish. A silent % of people obviously agree with them.
Talking about abortion in Missouri has always veered strongly toward The Handmaid’s Tale scenarios, unfortunately now more than ever.
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