Rep. Todd Akin had no sooner won Missouri’s GOP Senate primary this month than he seemed eager to hand over the election to incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. Akin instantly became a national sensation with a shocking statement about how “legitimate rape” rarely results in pregnancy.
When confronted on his view regarding exceptions to a ban on abortions, Akin proceeded to show how to abort a Senate campaign in record time: “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. You know I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”
First there is the distinction between “legitimate” and “illegitimate” rape that is too twisted to contemplate. Then there is Akin’s rather bizarre view of the female body and the existence of some type of kill switch in cases of rape within every woman.
Akin is a six-term U.S. congressman who probably could have drifted to a win in Missouri. Polls showed him a heavy favorite against McCaskill who is unpopular with many in Missouri as well as Washington. Akin, 65, was backed by former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and supported by many in the Tea Party. Akin was able to secure 36 percent of the vote against businessman John G. Brunner with 30 percent and former state treasurer Sarah Steelman with 29 percent. Steelman was the favorite of Sarah Palin and many in the Tea Party. Despite the tough primary, Akin was leading McCaskill in the polls.
That changed in a flash and he succeeded in moving a state from an expected win for the GOP into the doubtful column — assuming he does not withdraw from the race. Both Romney and Ryan have publicly criticized the comment. McCaskill appears to relish the thought of becoming the second most unpopular candidate in a two-person race. She has refused to call for Akin to step down and said that it would be a radical step to replace a candidate who just won the primary. Republicans however have lined up to condemn the statements and call for Akin to withdraw from the race.
Akin’s attempt to walk back from the comments was almost as awkward — claiming that he “misspoke” about rape. Here is the statement:
“As a member of Congress, I believe that working to protect the most vulnerable in our society is one of my most important responsibilities, and that includes protecting both the unborn and victims of sexual assault. In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it’s clear that I misspoke in this interview and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year. Those who perpetrate these crimes are the lowest of the low in our society and their victims will have no stronger advocate in the Senate to help ensure they have the justice they deserve.
“I recognize that abortion, and particularly in the case of rape, is a very emotionally charged issue. But I believe deeply in the protection of all life and I do not believe that harming another innocent victim is the right course of action. I also recognize that there are those who, like my opponent, support abortion and I understand I may not have their support in this election.”
Akin does not address the medical side of the comment or even explain what he meant about legitimate rape.
“Misspoke” is a remarkably flexible term to cover any statement where, according to Merriam-Webster, you can claim that you “expressed (oneself) imperfectly or incorrectly.” Of course, there remains the cause for such misspeak. It is one thing to get a date wrong or a country wrong or even a description of some past event. Here however Akin drew a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate rape and then proceeded to offer a medical claim that is almost medieval in character.
Here is the clip showing the “misspeech”:
Given the polarized situation in Missouri, this does not necessarily mean that McCaskill will win. However, with the GOP already struggling with the female vote, this is comment is likely to be played back in an endless loop. The question is the degree of pressure from the Romney campaign to get Akin to step aside given the possible drag on the ticket in November.
Source: CNN
Democrats Link Akin To Romney-Ryan: ‘The Real Issue’ Is The GOP
PEMA LEVY
AUGUST 20, 2012
TPM2012
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/dnc-akin-romney-ryan.php?ref=fpa
Excerpt:
Democrats are seizing on the firestorm started by Rep. Todd Akin, tying the Congressman’s controversial remarks about rape to Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan by calling his outburst indicative of the Republican Party and its nominees’ stance on women’s health issues.
Akin, the Republican Senate nominee in Missouri, said that victims of “legitimate rape” rarely become pregnant because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
In an email, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz linked Akin’s comments to a larger trend of “backward statements from Republicans on issues affecting women’s health” and pointed to the anti-abortion bills that Akin and Paul Ryan have worked on together.
“Now, Akin’s choice of words isn’t the real issue here,” Wasserman Schultz said in the email. “The real issue is a Republican party — led by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan — whose policies on women and their health are dangerously wrong.”
Really ?
House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
Science ??????
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/w_akin/400005
I suppose we now know the campaign is based on ill legitimate rational….
Todd Akin, Paul Ryan, and Redefining Rape
By Nick Baumann
Sun Aug. 19, 2012
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/08/todd-akin-paul-ryan-redefining-rape
On Sunday, Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), who is challenging Sen. Claire McCaskill in the Missouri Senate race, used an interview with a local television station to defend his belief that abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape: He claimed that women who are the victims of “legitimate rape” are unlikely to become pregnant. Akin said that the female body has “biological defenses” that prevent rape victims from getting pregnant. (That’s not true.) The implication of his position is that if you were raped and became pregnant, you must have actually wanted it—it wasn’t really rape.
This isn’t the first time Akin has expressed fringe views about rape in the context of the abortion debate. Last year, Akin, vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and most of the House GOP co-sponsored a bill that would have narrowed the already-narrow exceptions to the laws banning federal funding for abortion—from all cases of rape to cases of “forcible rape.”
After I reported on the “forcible rape” language in January 2011, a wave of outcry from abortion-rights, progressive, and women’s groups led the Republicans to remove it. But a few months later, in a congressional committee report, Republicans wrote that they believed the bill would continue to have the same effect despite the absence of the “forcible” language.
So why was the “forcible” language so important? Pro-life advocates believed they needed to include the word “forcible” in the law to pre-empt what National Right to Life Committee lobbyist Doug Johnson called a “brazen” effort by Planned Parenthood and other groups to obtain federal funding for abortions for any teenager by (falsely) claiming statutory rape. Abortion rights groups, Johnson warned, wanted to “federally fund the abortion of tens of thousands of healthy babies of healthy moms, based solely on the age of their mothers.” Richard Doerflinger, the US Council of Catholic Bishops’ top anti-abortion lobbyist, echoed Johnson in congressional testimony, arguing that the “forcible” language was “an effort on the part of the sponsors to prevent the opening of a very broad loophole for federally funded abortions for any teenager.” Planned Parenthood flatly denied having a plan to open up such a loophole.
The idea that women who are “legitimate” rape victims can’t get pregnant has currency in some corners of the fringe right. Akin embraces it. Does he embrace the conspiracy theory about the need for the “forcible rape” language, too?
What a wonderful thing your First Amendment is. It makes it possible for these people to be smoked out as nutters or hang themselves out to dry all by themselves.
Then you guys go and vote for them ……..
Akin is a prime example of the American Taliban at work . It is also amazing that Romney and Ryan have tried to distance themselves from their own beliefs!
shano,
Thanks for those links.
So, this astute, scientifically advanced fella thinks that rape is safe sex?
We had a discussion about Akin’s comments on my Paul Ryan post last night. Someone explained to me what “legitimate rape” is:
Jim
August 19, 2012 at 9:03 pm
Elaine M.
A legitimate rape is one where a woman is attacked and did not lead the person on in anyway. If a woman begins foreplay with a man and at some point wants to stop then that is not being characterized as a legitimate rape because her mentality is not the same in both cases. In case one she doesn’t know the perpetrator and probably fears for her life where as in the second (it is rape) only fears of the sexual act but probably not for her life. Again, both are rape just in different degrees.
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/08/18/romney-vp-pick-paul-ryan-cosponsored-personhood-ultrasound-and-let-women-die-legislation/#comment-407245
*****
I guess legitimate rape would be considered “first degree” rape in the minds of some.
‘Scuse me- I erred in my above posting, the two big cities in MO. vote Democratic- not Republican, I meant to say ‘Democratic’.
As a preacher I must often speak to a flock that does not always like what I have to say about things like politics, as opposed to religion. I am legally blind, although I can see things to a large degree but not read signs smaller than billboards. I have a guide dog. I will admit here and now that my guide dog is very articulate and quite mouthy. She introduced me to this blog. You might all know her and she might have been a bit talkative for a dog. She speaks, barks, growls, grunts, into a Dogalogue Machine and it comes out in print, in English. She signs in as : itchinBayDog. She might be a bit mouthy. I listen to her all day. She keeps me alive.
I appologize for beratting Missouri. This Akin guy is annoying because he says he went to divinity school. Yet the high forehead makes me think that he might be of some sort of stock that is interbred. Like, too many second cousins once removed having married on the upstream of his genetics. With a guy like this in the Senate one must say Praise The Lord But Pass The Ammunition. By that I mean that we can not rely on the law to protect us, we need lawyers, guns and money. And there was a song with those lyrics and I think that the next phrase was Lord Get Me Out of This. So, I would, as a preacher, recommend such things to the folks from that State of Missouri. Oh, Why do they spell it “Mizzou” on those football jerseys? Is there some reference to animals like Todd Akin involved there?
Send Lawyers, Guns and Money,… Lord Get Me Out Of This!…. dun a dun dun dun done. etc (Music)
Akin’s district is wealthy and very conservative which fits his philosophy perfectly. He is not my choice for Senator but may end up being so. This latest statement may help change that and I’m hoping it does. He has deep anti-abortion roots and praised the 1st Missouri Volunteers (a militia that had its roots in the civil war) for their anti-abortion work. That work, including threats to abortion providers and illegal actions against them, got the leader of the militia put in prison. Akin is a threat to civil rights.
The two big cities vote Republican and ‘out-state’ vote’s Republican. That’s one of the reason the Republicans want to tighten up Missouri’s voter ID rules which are already photo ID with one exception that does not disenfranchise the elderly, handicapped, and poor etc. though it does have an negative impact on some voters among those groups.
As a Mormon Bishop, Romney tries to stop a woman from having a life saving abortion? wow, these people are nuts
http://jezebel.com/5851050/the-curious-case-of-mitt-romney-an-abortion-and-eliza-dushkus-mom
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/08/rep-todd-akin-wrong-not-alone
This is mainstream ‘Right to Life’ propaganda. They teach it to the kids in these religious home schools as well……imagine
But, I’m not so sure that this will be the end of him.
UNFORTUNATELY Waldo… I think you are right….
Scary, isn’t it….
I am amazed that a successful politician could be that out of touch to make those remarks. Not shocked that he thinks it; just shocked that he didn’t know not to say it.
But, I’m not so sure that this will be the end of him.
Pardon me Reverend….
and people wonder why I think that many on the right are Batsh*t crazy….
these people are astonishing….
so R & R have criticized Todd for this statement he made…
the irony being… Ryan wanted to pass a law giving Personhood protection to Fetus’s…..
and Romney once tried to block a woman from his church from having an abortion that was to save the life of the mother….
clip from article…
On the day of the abortion, the couple showed up at the hospital only to be greeted by their bishop, who had shown up, unannounced, to try to prevent her from going through with it, regardless of the fact that a church official with a higher rank than his had already given the okay. The bishop was determined to make his case against the life-saving surgery, and he was a total dick about it. According to a 2007 interview with Dushku, the following exchange occurred,
He said – What do you think you’re doing?
She said – Well, we have to abort the baby because I have these blood clots.
And he said something to the effect of – Well, why do you get off easy when other women have their babies?
And she said – What are you talking about? This is a life threatening situation.
And he said – Well what about the life of the baby?
And she said – I have four other children and I think it would be really irresponsible to continue the pregnancy.
The bishop who tried to block that selfish, selfish clotted up woman from saving her own life with a legal medical procedure was one Mitt Romney. The woman he attempted to block did go through with her abortion and lived to see her four teenage children grow up. Her family later left the church.
http://jezebel.com/5851050/the-curious-case-of-mitt-romney-an-abortion-and-eliza-dushkus-mom
Things like this make me EMBARRASSED to admit I am an American….
WOW!!
JAG…
Is this guy from a rural area of Mizzoura? As a man of the cloth from the hinterlands, I would rather have it be that he be from a city. How could Claire possibly be behind in the polls? Did she make some gaffe? I saw her on national television twice this year discussing important issues and she was very impressive. A guy like this would not pass a literacy test in the old south. If this schmuck wins then we will have to examine this state a little further and talk about seceding it from the union. They are unreconstructed already. I wish that they were geographically on the border with Mexico so that we would not have to drive through when we go west on I-70. Hotsie, totsie, I smell a Nazi (Three Stooges).
As a man of the cloth I am a bit taken aback by this high forehead guy with first name Todd who claims to have graduated from a divinity school. I do believe that this is the same guy whom they made fun of by accenuating his first name on Saturday Night Live about 25 years ago. I recall that it was Roseann Roseann ODana who kept yelling: Hello Tooooodd!. Well, somehow the dumb schmuck, divinity background notwithstanding, resurrected himself in some state out there in the hinterlands which they call Mizzoura or Mizzou. I dont doubt that high forehead, foot in the mouth disease guy is ahead in the polls. That is the same state reference on this blog that outlaws the federal constitution in the review of criminal appeals. The case was State v. Freeman and was discussed on this blog. Unreconstructed was the word employed when a state supreme court says that the 14th Amendment does not apply.
This has been going on in the Republican Party since at least 1988:
March 23, 1988|By JOHN M. BAER, Daily News Staff Writer
HARRISBURG — The odds that a woman who is raped will get pregnant are “one in millions and millions and millions,” said state Rep. Stephen Freind, R-Delaware County, the Legislature’s leading abortion foe.
The reason, Freind said, is that the traumatic experience of rape causes a woman to “secrete a certain secretion” that tends to kill sperm.
Two Philadelphia doctors specializing in human reproduction characterized Freind’s contention as scientifically baseless.
Freind made the statement on a central Pennsylvania radio interview program earlier this month.”
So, they have to own this completely. this isn’t the only Republican to say these things.