Posted on 08/21/2012 8:09:12 AM PDT by Kaslin
Rep. Todd Akin has, unwittingly to be sure, harmed the pro-life movement, his senatorial race in Missouri, the Republican Party, and therefore quite possibly the nation.
Every person who speaks or writes for the public will make an occasional faux pas, and sooner or later, will write or say something inappropriate. The game of "gotcha" that the media play -- especially with regard to Republicans and conservatives -- is what makes so many politicians sound robotic when they speak.
But Congressman Akin said something that cries out for condemnation and retraction -- and necessitates an explanation.
On a Missouri TV program Sunday, he was asked his position on abortion in cases of rape. Akin responded, in part, that "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."
While he should not have used the term "legitimate rape," he could have explained later that, given the expanded definitions of rape, not all claims of "rape" are truly rape. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry for Feminist Perspectives on Rape states, for example, that "we must recognize that, in some cases, 'yes' also means no ... The man may threaten to sue for custody of their children, to derail her green card application, to evict her, or simply to sulk and make her life miserable for days should she refuse to have sex. Which (if any) of such nonviolent coercive pressures should be regarded as rape, either morally or legally, is a matter of some controversy."
That would have largely ended the issue. And he could have further noted that Republicans generally incline toward harsher penalties for violent crime than do Democrats.
The far greater problem was Congressman Akin's other comment: "From what I understand from doctors, [pregnancy is] really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
As one wit put it about such a comment: that was worse than wrong, it was stupid.
Akin should say so.
And so should the pro-life movement.
Unless -- and this would be upsetting -- he, and the movement, don't think this comment was stupid.
Pregnancy from rape is rare because a "woman's body shuts down"?
Who told Akin this? And why would he believe it, even if some doctor did tell him this?
Here is my theory.
I have spent a good part of my life showing what an intellectual bubble the left lives in. That is why so many could believe that boys don't really prefer trains to tea sets or girls dolls to army soldiers. Those who believe such nonsense usually live in an intellectual bubble. They are raised by liberal parents, taught by left-wing teachers from high school through graduate school, watch left-wing MTV and news, listen to liberal NPR, go to movies produced by leftists, etc. Their whole world is left-wing. They don't watch, listen to, study under, or socialize with conservatives.
Bubbles tend to produce nonsense. When the only people you talk to, read, and socialize with agree with you, it is easy to abandon critical thinking.
And when you are morally right -- and those who argue for a right to life of unborn human beings (or human fetuses, if you prefer) are morally and even scientifically right -- a bubble can make critical thought even more difficult.
I wonder if that is not the case with Rep. Akin's comment. If I were at a dinner party with Akin, and he said what he said in his Missouri television interview, as much as I consider the vast majority of abortions in America to be immoral acts, I would have respectfully asked the congressman whether he was aware of the marauding armies throughout history that raped women. Did he assume that very few of them -- like the German women raped by Soviet soldiers at the end of World War II -- got pregnant? Did he not know how many raped slaves gave birth? Was he not aware of the tragedy of the women of Darfur who, after being raped by Sudanese Arab soldiers, are abandoned by their families for getting pregnant out-of-wedlock?
This country is on the verge of an inexorable moral, social and economic decline. The left is doing to America what it has done to almost everything it has deeply influenced -- the arts, the university, religion, culture, minorities, Europe: ruining it. It is therefore morally incumbent on conservatives to do everything in their power not to give the left legitimate targets.
Therefore, the pro-life movement should announce that the comment on pregnancy has no basis in truth. And since truth is a supreme conservative and religious value, the movement neither espouses nor condones untruths. The Republican Party has said this. And since Todd Akin has not said this, his candidacy is no longer viable.
Morality, truth, and the most important elections on our lifetime demand no less.
It doesn’t matter what his ‘positions’ have been. If he can’t play the game of POLITICS to our advantage, he can take up another job!
He has to go! He’s made an embarrassment of our cause, and has lost the support of many conservatives, so he’s ‘toxic’ now. Unfortunately, that is the bottom line in politics.
NO need to sacrifice our war against these devils for one single soldier!
Why is it that when a Rep says something stupid, the calls for this organization or that to distance themselves from the person come out from every angle ... yet when someone on the left says something stupid, we hear crickets?
legitimate rape,better put some ice on that lip.
Bill Clinton
Yes, it`s unfair, but EVERY GOPer should be fully aware that no one on the right ever gets a mulligan for an idiotic, horrendously worded statement, regardless of the intent. It`s the dynamic under which they have to operate, like it or not.
He should`ve kept his response to the question broad, e.g., “I believe in the sanctity of innocent life without exception.” Apparently thinking he was brighter than he is, he tried to apply some “expert opinion,” and with that, sank his chances of winning that election, the GOP`s chances of gaining control of the Senate, and quite possibly Romney`s hopes in Missouri.
If he loves this country more than the desire to boost his own ego, Todd Akin will step aside.
Why do people bother to ask such a reflexively stupid question?
Why would it be otherwise?
If the right is morally superior to the left, then of course the left will be held to a lower standard.
If the left maintained the same standards of self-reproach, they wouldn't condone or support so many of the reprehensible tenets that they do.
It's self-evident that the whore has more fun than the ole biddy churchlady. If the whore cleaned up her act and went to church then she wouldn't be a whore anymore.
My E-MAIL to the NRSC
There you go again, your candidate in MO uses the wrong word to cite a fact. The Alinsky cadre of the Democrat party starts frothing at the mouth and you roll over on your backs and meekly plead “ we didn’t mean to hurt your feelings”.
You testicle deprived illegitimate offspring, get up on your hind legs and fight. The best defence is a full out attack.
The Republican party doing what they do best, working doubly hard to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Why did the Obama administration let Roman Polanski walk? Oh wait, that wasn’t “rape rape”. So speaketh Whoopi Goldberg.
The left has no standards.
There is no question Todd Akin misspoke. He has said that, and he has apologized. Conservatives should not “pile on” him - that is the job of liberals and the GOP Establishment!
Exactly
There comes a time when you stay loyal to your friends even if it costs you something in the short term. All the conservative political “realists’ ought to remember Akin’s misspoke when discussing innocent human life that came forth from a very vile act. Difficult to discuss in sound bites. What is not difficult is to remember how Kennedy, Clinton,Edwards and other Democrat heroes actually treat women. Also let’s not forget the Democrats have given Clinton a prime role at their convention.
I am not from Missouri and I don’t know if you are or not, but if you are not then I believe that is up to the voters of MO, not to you or myself, or anyone else
I agree and I am disgusted that they are
“Yes, it`s unfair, but EVERY GOPer should be fully aware that no one on the right ever gets a mulligan for an idiotic, horrendously worded statement, regardless of the intent. It`s the dynamic under which they have to operate, like it or not.”
Then the conservative cause is a lost cause if this is how you feel. If you do not want to step up and fight for the cause, then stop being judgmental of other’s. He made a mistake, apologized and is moving on. He is 100% pro-life.
Medical opinion similar to Akin's has been cited for decades
Here is an excerpt
By Tim Townsend and Blythe Bernhard
Missouri congressman far from being a lone voice on issue
JewishWorldReview.com | (MCT) "The question of rape always stirs the emotions whenever it is introduced into the abortion debate," Dr. Fred Mecklenburg wrote in 1972. "Unfortunately, the emotional impact of rape often clouds the real issues and the real facts."
Mecklenburg — an assistant clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Minnesota Medical School at the time — could not have known how prescient his words would feel 40 years later.
While U.S. Rep. Todd Akin cited only "doctors" as his source of information about the rarity of pregnancy resulting from rape, it is two pages, from Mecklenburg's 1972 article, "The Indications for Induced Abortion: A Physician's Perspective," that have influenced two generations of anti-abortion rights activists hoping to build a medical case to ban all abortions without exception.
In Mecklenburg's original article, he wrote that pregnancy resulting from rape "is extremely rare," and cited as an example the city of Buffalo, N.Y., which had not seen "a pregnancy from confirmed rape in over 30 years." Other cities — Chicago, Washington, St. Paul — also had experienced lengthy spells without a rape-caused pregnancy, Mecklenburg wrote.
“He made a mistake, has apologized, and is moving on.”
Great.
And he`s going to lose by double-digits in a campaign that was ..before Sunday.. all but a slam dunk for the GOP. This was one we needed to take back the Senate, but it`s going to now fall handily into the dems` column.
And we`re going to be left short of Obamacare repeal.
But hey... Akin apologized and is moving on.
There are two problems with Akins’ statement.
1) Yes, it is *statistically* improbable (but not impossible) that pregnancy will result from a rape. But to think that the woman’s body somehow “shuts down” is what is referred to in children as “magical thinking” (thinking something is true just because you want it to be true). And in adults, it is just called “stupidity.” A woman’s body does not have any wonderful, magical way to reject the sperm of a rapist. And the LAST thing the GOP needs is someone stupid to be actually ELECTED to the legislature. Then you have another Slow Joe Biden on your hands. That does NOT help the GOP or our causes.
2) The reason Stupid Akins’ comment is insulting to women is because if you believe it, then it makes any woman who *does* get pregnant because of a rape look as though she somehow wanted the rape or accepted it. Because after all, if she REALLY was upset about the “legitimate” rape, her body would have “shut things down,” right? So his comment was insulting to women who have been raped and still became pregnant, and is also toxic to the whole discourse. Because *blaming* a women for a rape she has suffered (by insinuating that she must have really wanted or accepted it) is just reprehensible.
Akins needs to go. Now. While they can get someone else onto the ticket.
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