Some strategists believe that Rep. Todd Akin may have not only saved the most unpopular Democrat in the U.S. Senate but could well have kept the Senate in Democratic hands. It is too early to tell, but Akin yesterday let the deadline pass for withdrawal without a court order and refused to yield to demands from leading Republicans that he drop out. He appears hoping that the Republicans in the state would prefer to send a man viewed internationally as a dysfunctional moron rather than accept six more years with McCaskill. What is even more disturbing, however, is Akin’s view of his own conduct. In refusing to leave the race, Akin said that he simply mad a bad choice in using “one word in one sentence on one day.”
As now even herders in yurts in Mongolia can tell you, Akin become a global laughing stock when he went on the air and explained “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.”
That ridiculous statement appears to come down to just one stray word, according to Akin: “I misspoke one word in one sentence on one day, and all of a sudden, overnight, everybody decides, ‘Well, Akin can’t possibly win.'” It is not clear what single word Akin is referencing but I assume it is “legitimate.” He is of course ignoring his breathtaking claim that doctors (still unnamed) have told him that women possess a type of kill switch over pregnancies that they can use to not get pregnant after a rape. That any adult would utter such nonsense raises more questions of Akin’s intellect than his attitude toward women. Moreover, after bringing the unity of the GOP against him (including the national party withdrawing millions from the race against McCaskill), Akin is minimizing his own bizarre conduct and how outrageous his statement was for women, rape victims, doctors, humans, and possibly every mammal on the planet.
Moreover, it is not simply a view that “Akin can’t possibly win.” McCaskill is so unpopular that he could win but that would be even more embarrassing for both the GOP and the country.
Source: USA Today
A very minor point, but how can the world trust the USA when we have so many crazies?
The muslims do not even hold a candle to these guys. They only kill women who are raped (in Afghanistan). Here they want them to kiss and live happily ever after with their rapists.
These are the same ilk, who feel the Prez should sena a hit team to take out Assange, or whoever their hate object of the moment happens to be.
I think I shall join them. Send a hit team after Ryan and all his anti-abortion supporters. You DO know that I am joking.
DON’T YOU???? Oh, your hit team is already out.
idealist707, sorry about that. I meant age of the fetus.
Jeff,
Excuse me, I don’t understand. What age should be excluded, or what did you mean?
“Limiting the abortion to a certain age is something I can live with.”
From a strictly legal point of view there are various sorts of rape.
Rape is not rape no more than killing is killing. There should be different legal definitions for different sorts of rape.
Of course that is only for punishment purposes.
Abortions should be legal. Period. Limiting the abortion to a certain age is something I can live with. But saying that only cases of abortion by rape or incest should be legal is not.
Claire McCaskill was a prosecutor for Jackson County when I worked for them. She had politician written all over her, but was a pretty good prosecutor. I worked on an arson task force w/ her in 1981. She was front and center when the media was around..again a politician. NTTAWWT.
Even though Republicans who have been on the hill for decades know Akins incendiary comments could spell disaster they can’t even peer pressure, or bully their own party into not supporting his platform. Literally.
At the Republican National Convention next week the Republican party will commit itself to a platform for a constitutional amendment protecting human life, an unborn child’s right to life that should not be infringed by the government, and protection for the unborn under the 14th amendment. Sounds like Personhood and anti-abortion without exceptions to me.
Representative Todd Akin is a champion to demagogues, pundits and polemicists who hold fast to harmful beliefs.
I don’t begrudge Todd Akin’s position on abortion or any other politician who feels as he does. I welcome their positions. I like to have concrete reasons why I’m voting for or against someone, instead of like the Republican Party this year who will tow the line but won’t be able to point to a legitimate reason as to why.
Thank you Representative Todd Akin for standing up to the bullying flip-floppers of your party who don’t have the chutzpah to stand by their true record. You are a giant among ideologically small men.
http://changecomesslow.com/2012/08/22/rep-todd-akin-represents-the-heart-of-the-republican-party/
Just Think No
By MAUREEN DOWD
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/opinion/dowd-just-think-no.html?ref=todayspaper
Excerpt:
There’s something trying about an unforgiving man suddenly in need of forgiveness.
Yet Todd Akin is right. He shouldn’t have to get out of the United States Senate race in Missouri simply for saying what he believes. He reflects a severe stance on abortion that many in his party embrace, including the new vice presidential candidate.
“I talk about one word, one sentence, one day out of place, and, all of a sudden, the entire establishment turns on you,” Representative Akin complained to the conservative radio talk-show host Dana Loesch on Tuesday as he spurned pleas from Mitt Romney and other G.O.P. big shots to abort his bid. He continued: “They just ran for cover at the first sign of any gunfire, and I think we need to rush to the gunfire.”
He’s right again. Other Republicans are trying to cover up their true identity to get elected. Even as party leaders attempted to lock the crazy uncle in the attic in Missouri, they were doing their own crazy thing down in Tampa, Fla., by reiterating language in their platform calling for a no-exceptions Constitutional amendment outlawing abortion, even in cases of rape, incest and threat to the life of the mother.
Paul Ryan, who teamed up with Akin in the House to sponsor harsh anti-abortion bills, may look young and hip and new generation, with his iPod full of heavy metal jams and his cute kids. But he’s just a fresh face on a Taliban creed — the evermore antediluvian, anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-gay conservative core. Amiable in khakis and polo shirts, Ryan is the perfect modern leader to rally medieval Republicans who believe that Adam and Eve cavorted with dinosaurs.
shano,
Giving Birth to a “Rapist’s Child”: A Discussion and Analysis of the Limited Legal Protections Afforded toWomen Who Become Mothers Through Rape
SHAUNA R. PREWITT*
http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/pdf/98-3/Prewitt.PDF
Excerpts:
Approximately 25,000 women become pregnant through rape each year. In
response, many states have passed special laws, devised streamlined procedures, or both, to aid pregnant women who seek abortions or wish to place their rape-conceived children for adoption. However, few states have passed laws to aid the large numbers of raped women who choose to raise their rape-conceived children. Without such laws, in most states, a man who
fathers through rape has the same custody and visitation privileges to that
child as does any other father of a child. Moreover, as a result of this legal
void, raped women and their children are left to face substantial and potentially terrible consequences. This Note argues that the absence of these laws stems from the societal images and other rhetoric concerning the pregnant raped woman that depict raped women as hating their unborn children and viewing their rape pregnancies as continuing their rape experience. These societal constructions have created a biased “prototype” of the pregnant raped woman and of the prototypical rape pregnancy experience by which all pregnant raped women are judged. Women who raise their rape-conceived children depart from the prototype and are, as a result, viewed with suspicion. Legal protections, such as alternate custody rights, are then denied to them because, being viewed as “imposter” rape victims, it is thought that there is nothing special about these women or their conceptions requiring any change in the manner in which custody and visitation determinations are made.
*****
I. WOMEN WHO CHOOSE TO RAISE THEIR RAPE-CONCEIVED CHILDREN: A LIFETIME TETHERED TO THEIR RAPISTS
As already noted, a significant percentage of raped women choose to raise the children they conceived through rape.15 Under most states’ laws, a man who fathers a child through rape has the same legal rights to custody and visitation in regard to that child as does any other father of a child due to the absence of any laws restricting or terminating such rights; as a result, many raped women face significant consequences following their decisions to raise the children they conceived through rape. They may be forced to share custody privileges of their children with their rapists, to ensure their rapists’ access to their children, to foster their rapists’ relationships with their children, and, in some cases, to make
joint decisions about their children’s welfare.
shano,
An excerpt from that article that you provided a link to:
“You see, nine months after my rape, I gave birth to a beautiful little girl. You could say she was conceived in rape; she was. But she is also so much more than her beginnings. I blissfully believed that after I finally had decided to give birth to and to raise my daughter, life would be all roses and endless days at the playground. I was wrong again.
“It would not be long before I would learn firsthand that in the vast majority of states — 31 — men who father through rape are able to assert the same custody and visitation rights to their children that other fathers enjoy. When no law prohibits a rapist from exercising these rights, a woman may feel forced to bargain away her legal rights to a criminal trial in exchange for the rapist dropping the bid to have access to her child.”
*****
Holy crap!
Malisha 1, August 22, 2012 at 11:22 am
It’s typical minimization of the situation for him to claim he “used one word wrong.” What word? Rape? “Legitimate”? “bodies”?
He did NOT use one word wrong. He promulgated a wrong idea, and a wrongFUL idea, and a wrong philosophy, and a wrongful position, one that is hateful, misogynist, nasty, dishonest, tyrannical, abusive, and false. That’s NOT a word. That’s a symptom of a criminal conspiracy to deny human rights to women and children world-wide.
——————————
Exactly. You said it well. It wasn’t a wrong word, it was a wrong idea.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/22/opinion/prewitt-rapist-visitation-rights/index.html
Bet lawmakers like him are behind this rule in 31 states that rapists can have visitation rights.
I’d tell you what I really think of you….. But I don’t want to be banned on this Blog. You should seek Mental counselling……… Your wife should leave you, and your daugeters should be afraid of you………
The word: Understand.
rcampbell, your generalizations (no republican should be allowed to hold office, all Missourians in the 2nd district are Neanderthals) confirm that you are part of the problem. Are people allowed to have a different opinion than you and not be chastized? Can we not have a discussion without the insults?
Todd Akin Opens Door to Possible Exit
By George Stephanopoulos | ABC News Blogs
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/todd-akin-opens-door-possible-exit-115814351–abc-news-topstories.html
It’s typical minimization of the situation for him to claim he “used one word wrong.” What word? Rape? “Legitimate”? “bodies”?
He did NOT use one word wrong. He promulgated a wrong idea, and a wrongFUL idea, and a wrong philosophy, and a wrongful position, one that is hateful, misogynist, nasty, dishonest, tyrannical, abusive, and false. That’s NOT a word. That’s a symptom of a criminal conspiracy to deny human rights to women and children world-wide.
Juris
I insist you not overlook my generalization. Your additional analysis of Missouri confirms my description. There is no excuse for voting for any Republican.
The GOP reaps what it sowed
The GOP sold its soul to the extremist Christian right. So why do its leaders act surprised by their Todd Akins?
By Joan Walsh
8/22/12
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/22/the_gop_reaps_what_it_sowed/
Excerpt;
I almost feel sorry for Todd Akin. Almost. He and his crazy, ultra-right ilk have been cultivated and flattered and milked for votes by Republican elites for more than 30 years, and then, when it comes to actual policy implementation, mostly abandoned by presidents going back to Ronald Reagan. Republican primary candidates make big promises to the Christian ultra-right; Republican presidents mostly break them.
Now Mitt Romney is accelerating the process, disappointing his party’s far-right base before he’s even elected, by joining other establishment leaders in asking Akin to leave the Missouri senate race over his idiotic comment that women rarely get pregnant by way of rape, because “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Romney and co. want Akin to shut his candidacy down, and he won’t do it.
I don’t blame him. On the far right – with the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, Ayatollah Bryan Fischer, former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and macho hate-talker Dana Loesch – Akin knows he’s a hero. And let’s be honest: Romney’s VP pick, Paul Ryan, has co-sponsored as much extremist anti-abortion legislation as Akin. Ryan is the Todd Akin of Wisconsin, just a little bit more buttoned down and polished, not given to public flights of fancy about the workings of our lady parts. (Today Ryan appeared to stick to his belief that there should be no access to abortion even for rape victims, telling a Pittsburgh reporter, “I stand by my pro-life record in Congress.”
For some reason, the Republican elite didn’t expect their quadrennial culture war extremism to leak out of the GOP primary into the general election. Eric Fehrnstrom told us directly: Romney would shake his “Etch A Sketch” and erase his ultra-right pandering to the GOP base in time to be competitive with independents. The crazy battle over the contraception-coverage mandate made that difficult, but Romney and others on the right complained that those Mean, Mean Democrats made the whole issue up – they didn’t want to take away anyone’s birth control! (Except for the majority who support a personhood amendment to the constitution, which would ban many forms of birth control.)
But the war on women had died down a little in the last couple of months. Romney was narrowing President Obama’s edge with women voters in some polls. I can barely remember the last time Rush Limbaugh called a liberal woman a “slut” or a “prostitute.” I hadn’t said “vagina” on television in weeks.
Then along came Todd Akin, with his crude, creepy obsession with the way women’s bodies supposedly work. This one the GOP can’t blame on Democrats. And now the party is coming unglued over whether Akin should give up his Senate run. I can understand why Akin’s not caving.
Given that since 1992, the Republican platform has pledged to ban abortion even in cases of rape, Akin had to be shocked that his explanation of how some women flout the rape “exception” blew apart his party. The party is on record saying the rape exception shouldn’t exist, anyway! So who cares about the actual science behind rape and pregnancy? Akin and his allies don’t believe in any exceptions, even for “legitimate rape.”
rcampbell, I will overlook the generalization reference of Neanderthals (outside of politics, the people here are as nice and friendly as can be and it is a great place to raise a family). I am aware of the entire state being able to vote, but that does not change my opinion. Look at Missouri’s voting record – they voted for McCain in 2008, albeit by a slim margin, despite the “buzz” surrounding Obama, which is why Obama is not campaigning here. I think it will be close, but Akin will win.
Why are we always (?) only offered the choice between two ills?
You can’t judge a place by one man’s experience, but I will state that Missouri (St. Louis) was the place I met a
a womanm that I would have married; and men I could never work with. No proof, but Akins just added a big brick to that pile.