Posted on 08/20/2012 7:07:41 AM PDT by Second Amendment First
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 in an interview broadcast Sunday that women’s bodies can prevent pregnancies in “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 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.
Rep. Akin will be a guest on the Charlie Brennan show at 9:20 am Monday to speak about his comments.
(Excerpt) Read more at stlouis.cbslocal.com ...
You wrote that “there’s tens of thousands of women annually in the US who get pregnant as a result of rape.”
That doesn’t seem true.
While there are tens of thousands of completed rapes per year, the number of pregnancies that result from forcible rape are less than 1,000 per year, according to this site: http://www.physiciansforlife.org/content/view/492/26/
If you disagree with their calculations, please explain why.
Great, another Republican candidate that can’t spit out a sentence without falling down. How can the words “legitimate rape” ever come out? Why can’t our side speak? Ugh. Now one of the easiest pickups in the Senate is in jeopardy.
He said it was "rare". I wouldn't call 5% rare. And it would also have to be compared to the pregnancy rate from consensual sex.
“Wow, talk about stupid... A sure fire win in the senate race is now in jepordy. Thanks man...”
Sigh. A repeat of the disaster in Colorado in 2010, when that Tea Party favorite fool Ken Buck lost a sure Senate pickup against a weak candidate and a Democrat party divided by a divisive primary.
Buck simply could NOT keep his size 12 cowboy boots out of his mouth. Every time they got yanked out, why they instantly got sucked back in, as if boot and mouth were the opposite polls of a powerful magnet.
Buck clearly wouldn’t listen to his advisers, he could not stay on message, and he thought he was smarter than the press (which he wasn’t). Completely infuriating. I could have done better than Buck.
Buck at least had an excuse though: he’d never run for office beyond Weld County District Attorney. No such excuse for Atkin.
Almost any Republican can win a contest in this country if the electorate isn’t completely dominated by leftist Progressives. Scott Brown in Massachusetts demonstrated that. Brown stayed on message. He had five talking points and never, ever deviated from them. No matter what question was asked, he answered with one or more of his five talking points. Not a single gaff or gotcha was incurred from Brown. Now really, how difficult is that strategy? Just sit in a room and practice that strategy with some pretend-reporters until you can do that in your sleep. Once you have it down pat, you’ll win your election.
I'll make it easy for you - the prosecution and the victim state that the pregnancy was a result of the alleged rape. So there's nothing for the defense to "prove."
I have no idea what you mean by the 5% "exception." If you truly believe what you're typing, you'll be going into that jury room and say "I have reasonable doubt that this was an actual rape - since the alleged victim is pregnant, that means there's a good chance she's lying - does anyone else agree?"
So will Ryan and Romney. Get used to it.
That site makes the claim with absolutely no evidence. The trauma that might—and it’s a big might—affect pregnancy is trauma that occurs before ovulation and potential pregnancy.
For a raped woman to get pregnant, she would have to already be ovulatory. Could continued emotional trauma lead to miscarriage at some point? Potentially, yes, but that’s not keeping her from getting pregnant—that’s stopping her from carrying to full term.
Because other studies place the total much higher: NIH. And they have calculations, too. The correct total is no doubt somewhere between the two figures.
That doesn't change the fact that Akins' premise is idiotic and his statements are insulting. And his real point - that any abortion is wrong and we should not compound the tragedy of rape with the taking of another human life - was lost in his inept delivery.
This is not the first time Akin has screwed up and delivered custom made soundbites to the McCaskill campaign, and it won't be the last. This one just generated the most headlines.
He used “rare” and “unlikely”. How sure are you of that 5% and 32,000 number. How many of those are “reported” as rapes for the purpose of getting Medicaid to pay for the abortions???
“...sparked a furor ...”
Anything any Republican says, right now at this time, is going to “spark a furor” as far as the media goes. They’re looking for ANYTHING to distract people from Obama’s miserable record of failure. That being said, this was a dumbass thing to say, especially now.
People do talk about marital rape or gay rape.
The assumption had been that rape was ‘stranger rape’, and so date rape was simply coined to refer to when women have been in such a relationship with a man—and there more likely in a place that afforded opportunity for a perpetrator—than if it were a stranger.
Just because someone somewhere claimed that women don’t tend to make up rape allegations, doesn’t mean that date rape isn’t a situationally useful term.
Some people lie about the commission of other crimes as well, that doesn’t change the definition of said crime.
You’re the one being illogical here.
But he didn't stop. And he won't in the future. And he's placing the seat in jeopardy of 6 more years of a Democrat.
And they would state that why???
Keep in mind that if the "Personhood" types get their way, if she does later have a miscarriage, she'll have to be interrogated by Homicide detectives investigating to make sure it was a miscarriage and not an abortion.
Usually those women are older and their fertility is falling anyway. But the biological impact on hormones in such a case occurs before the sexual act, not at the time thereof or afterward.
That would not be the case with rape.
The victim is obviously pregnant and is testifying in the courtroom? Perhaps she’s a nun or something. If so the pregnancy is supporting evidence of the rape (to most people, but not you, obiviously.)
I mean, you have a victim that has done exactly what you want - not aborted after being raped. Why would she try to hide that?
You are going off the point. There are studies showing that pregnancy results from rape, and that it is not “rare.” How many of the raped women in Rwanda do you think were trying to get Medicaid to pay for abortions? You’re being ridiculous.
If you stand behind the idiotic comment that a woman’s body “shuts down” to prevent impregnation from rape, come up with scientific evidence in the form of a reputable journal or standard OB textbook. If you can’t, then work on a way Akin can explain away his comment because he’s going to need that.
I don’t want to hear anything from Akin but his statement that he is stepping aside in favor of a candidate who actually has a chance to pick up the Senate seat.
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