“Devious” does not begin to describe the mischief that has been wrought in recent days, first with a Senatorial candidate who made a double gaffe on the air, with almost a single breath, then proceeded to double down on the damage already done, by neither admitting ignorance, nor by exhibiting any sort of humility for what was, for a short time anyway, only a misuse of a single word.
Rape is never “legitimate”, there is only one word that accurately describes this act of personal terrorism, and that is “forcible”. Nothing legitimate about that sort of trauma at all. Rape is an assault, a physical battering, with intent to do sufficient bodily harm so submission becomes the only alternative offered. The rapist relies on greater physical strength and the relative lack of will on the part of the victim to exert dominance. Ugly any way you look at it, rape is form of sexual bullying that is wrong on so many levels.
That objection aside, the reliance on some long-abandoned medical theory, that the female endocrine system somehow makes it impossible for the fertilized ovum to implant is the female is subjected to severe physical trauma, has been disproven over and over, long before this postulate was ever raised. There is roughly the same probablity that fertilization will take place, and the fertilized egg will implant, after a rape as after consensual union without all the trauma.
Now, the argument is made, to terminate a pregnancy after the act of forcible rape, is that just, right or even to be considered? There are so many variables here, it is hard to come with a “one-rule” answer. The liberals have had a easy answer (for them), ever since the right to abortion on demand was authorized by judicial decree, but nowhere is there any record of any such law being determined by public acceptance, through representative voting on the virtues or the ethical wrongness of such a blanket permission.
In his head, this may be the point that Todd Akin was trying to make, but he either cannot or will not articulate it, and falls back on his “strong Christian belief” as support, no logic allowed.
Therefore, it becomes a mission from God to stand or fall on this one postulate, and everything else just gets lost in the smoke and ruin that is left in its aftermath.
While all this as an admirable goal, as seen in the abstract, it only diminishes the larger effort here. People who should know better get swept up in the passion of the moment, and if the game doesn’t go their way, they will just scoop up all their marbles and go home.
That strategy for getting your way wore thin at about the age of six.
“Rape is never “legitimate”,”
This is the one word that shines a burning beam into the intellectual make up of Akin’s core beliefs concerning rape.
Some will say a poor choice of words, a gaffe, misspoken verbiage, but that word is very significant and has a very damning meaning.
Akin was referring to women who get pregnant and then claim rape in order to get an abortion, (illegitimate rape) hence the supporting argument that legitimate rape would not result in pregnancy, but a phoney claim of rape had to be phoney because by his logic, the woman got pregnant.