Approximately 20,000 women who are raped every year... Carry their children to term. Akin insulted them and did a lot of damage to the pro-life movement with his stupidity.
If he weren’t a selfish fool he would have stepped aside.
How did he insult them? By saying they are rare? By saying that stress can lower fertility? Or were his comments misconstrued as saying that if you got pregnant it must not have been a “legitimate rape” (which is not what he said at all)?
The insult is in the hype, not in what he actually said, as far as I can tell.
There was an article posted a few days ago, about a lesbian couple in Nevada that went to the hospital when the pregnant one developed complications. The hospital wasn’t going to let the other make medical decisions because they weren’t married, although they had a certificate of a civil union. The article said the woman was distraught about that and then she lost the baby.
Did that article insult me, since I have lost 2 children (one to miscarriage and another to stillbirth) and they seem to be implying that stress kills babies? Are the authors of that article - by hinting that stress can cause miscarriage - insulting me by saying if I had just chilled out my babies would have lived?
If I wanted to make this into a political crusade I could claim that. I could “community organize” (agitate) to try to get that reporter destroyed. I wouldn’t be successful because I don’t have a whole political and media machine at my disposal, but it would be the same thing as is going on here.
His comments were not politically smart. They may have been insensitive. But the agitators are blowing this whole thing way out of proportion, and folks on our side are so afraid of the agitprop that we’re playing right along with it.