Monday, August 20, 2012

Todd Akin (R) on "Legitimate Rape"

I can see a moral distinction between between a 17 year old guy and his 18 year old girl friend of three years forgetting to set the clock forward an hour and thus breaking a law, and a man forcing himself on a woman at knife point. That, as far as I can tell, is not the road Akin was traveling down.

What Akin did was announce a breakthrough in (false) medical knowledge whereby a woman can somehow will herself to not get pregnant while being raped, and in the process accusing every woman who did get pregnant from a rape of making the whole thing up. Whatever point Akin was attempting, he succeeded in dealing a likely deathblow to his campaign as well as cause some headaches for his party.

Video embedded below.



"In the clip, Charles Jaco, of St. Louis Fox affiliate KTVI’s “Jaco Report,” asks Akin whether he thinks abortions ought to permissible in a situation where a woman is raped. While explaining his position, Akin claimed that pregnancy only rarely results from “legitimate rape.”

“Well you know, people always want to make it as one of those things where how do you slice this particularly tough, sort of ethical question,” he replied. “It seems to me first of all, from what I understand from doctors — that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But, let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work, or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

Good grief. First, pregnancy from rape isn’t all that uncommon, as Twitchy discovered with just a little research; it’s around 5%. At least one researcher has found that conception rates for rape actually exceeds that of single instances of consensual sex. Second, what in Akin’s mind constitutes legitimate rape?
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