For the life of me, I don’t understand why he said what he did.
His guard was down. He attempted an earnest answer to a gotcha question, not realizing it was a gotcha question.
This happens to practically every politician at some point. If it hadn't happened to Akin, it would've happened to some other GOP candidate later on this year, before the election. (And all other GOP candidates can thank Akin for reminding them to get their answers to "gotcha" questions ready!)
Even so I don't see anything terrible in what he said. In fact, I agree with it, which is the point of this post.
I think he wanted to say - wanted to have it be true - that pregnancy as a result of rape happens very rarely. That's because he's not confident in saying that an unborn baby should not be killed because of evil actions of his father, even though nobody would say that a 2-year-old should be killed because his father raped either his mother or someone else. It always comes down to dehumanizing the unborn child because we really can't "see" him in the way we see a born child.
He also wanted to say that forcible rape is a subset of rape-legally-defined, which is true but irrelevant.
I don’t either.
He’s an idiot.