War on women, what war on women? (Looks around wildly for invisible war on women made up by democratic commies) Oh wait, this might be it!
TPM– Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri who is running against Sen. Claire McCaskill, justified his opposition to abortion rights even in case of rape with a claim that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy.
“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
He understands very little, obviously, outside of the comforting magic inherent in his Bronze-age mythology and flaky new age conservative wackiness . But I’ll bet you Akin’s small dollar campaign contributions spike because of this.
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'Tis Himself
August 19, 2012 at 1:04 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I didn’t know Liberty University had a medical school.
piegasm
August 19, 2012 at 1:14 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
From the original article…
Let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work, or something,” Akin said. “I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.
Because the only people involved are the rapist and the baby, amirite?
Ibis3, member of the Oppressed Sisterhood fanclub
August 19, 2012 at 1:25 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
You’ll have to pardon me for puking first at the phrase “legitimate rape”. Oh fuck, that just makes me shudder just typing that out.
Okay, now that that’s dispensed with….
WTF? How does he imagine that could possibly happen? “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down”?? How could a body possibly distinguish between “Yes, I enthusiastically consent” and “No, get the fuck away from me”? I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around the thought process here.
carlie
August 19, 2012 at 1:26 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Even if that were true, which it is NOT, wouldn’t that be a self-abortion, then? Making it a natural phenomenon, and therefore abortion isn’t a bad thing, or if abortion is bad, then women who have been raped must be medically forced to somehow keep the pregnancy in spite of their bodies? He has no idea what the implications of that statement from his own viewpoints even are.
kraut
August 19, 2012 at 1:37 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
That guy is a potential “law maker”?
Pass the bucket please, I like to puke too.
Pierce R. Butler
August 19, 2012 at 1:42 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
One of his fellow wingnuts has suggested that “
legitimatereal rape” means anal rape perpetrated on a virgin.I haven’t seen any studies, but will tentatively accept that the pregnancy rate from such attacks is probably on the low end.
David Marjanović
August 19, 2012 at 1:51 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
“I didn’t go to Evil Medical School to be called ‘Mister’, thankyouverymuch.”
…oh. We’re not on Pharyngula. Well, imagine the next paragraph is in Comic Sans:
Of cooooourse not! The female body has ways of shutting the sperm cells and/or the egg cell down somehow! And because it happens by magic, it’s quick enough to act before fertilization can occur!!eleventyone!
Seconded.
soul_biscuit, attorney at LOL
August 19, 2012 at 1:55 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
The operative word is “legitimate.” If the woman does not become pregnant, then the encounter was non-consensual and her magical uterine shield deployed. If the woman does become pregnant, then clearly she consented, and no “legitimate” rape occurred.
Simple.
didgen
August 19, 2012 at 1:57 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I’m going out on a limb, but I bet the number is the same as for any unprotected sex act. No more, no less.
dan4
August 19, 2012 at 2:29 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
@2: “Even if that were true, which it is NOT, wouldn’t that be a self-abortion then?”
No, unless you’re coming from the perspective that a pregnancy prevention measure (which is obviously what Akin meant by “shutting the whole thing down”) is an example of an “abortion.”
dan4
August 19, 2012 at 2:31 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
To clarify, I’m not defending Akin’s remarks, I’m just commenting on carlie’s apparent misunderstanding of what the former meant by the words “shutting the whole thing down.”
AsqJames
August 19, 2012 at 2:43 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I wonder if the doctors he’s heard from ever read the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology?
peicurmudgeon
August 19, 2012 at 2:47 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I remember a myth circulating in high school back in the 70s that if the girl didn’t orgasm, she couldn’t get pregnant. I also remember graduating with a number of students in maternity clothes. But this guy is much more insidious than that.
earwig
August 19, 2012 at 3:02 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Wait, so according to him, if a woman gets pregnant, it can’t have been “legitimate rape”.
It must have been “illegitimate rape”.
What an ignorant jerk.
Alverant
August 19, 2012 at 3:49 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Pass the bucket.
Stephen "DarkSyde" Andrew
August 19, 2012 at 3:56 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Right, as opposed to illegit rapes. Which is code for ‘faking to get an abortion you ungodly whore.”
Zinc Avenger (Sarcasm Tags 3.0 Compliant)
August 19, 2012 at 4:01 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Is there a form you need to fill out before committing a “legitimate rape”?
amethyststarling
August 19, 2012 at 4:56 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I guess this would be a time where the evangelical nuts would be okay with sharia law and want four witnesses to prove it was a legitimate rape?
Christoph Burschka
August 19, 2012 at 4:58 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
So after “not rape if you were aroused” now we get “not rape if you got pregnant”.
… yeah, I have nothing.
margaretwhitestone
August 19, 2012 at 5:12 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
When you believe in mystical deities who can do anything, it’s easy enough to imagine women have magical defenses against unwanted pregnancies resulting from rape–especially if that absolves you of any guilt from your decision to refuse them the option to terminate such pregnancies.
Randomfactor
August 19, 2012 at 5:16 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
He now “misspoke,” which means he retroactively said something different. Except he didn’t.
Randomfactor
August 19, 2012 at 5:21 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
That guy is a potential “law maker”?
What “potential”? He’s in Congress NOW.
peterh
August 19, 2012 at 5:29 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Pass the bucket – of warm tar. And somebody get a few feather pillows.
WMDKitty (Always growing and learning)
August 19, 2012 at 6:17 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
“legitimate rape”?!
*stomps off to the Angry Dome. Again.*
Zinc Avenger (Sarcasm Tags 3.0 Compliant)
August 19, 2012 at 8:05 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
@peterh, #23:
That’s such a waste of feather pillows.
I’m sure there are some unwanted chicken carcasses with the feathers still on them we can roll him in.
timgueguen
August 19, 2012 at 10:08 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Apparently Akin doesn’t realise that having a Doctor in front of your name because you have a PhD in theoligy doesn’t make you a medical expert. I’m betting he got the idea from some professional godbot.
anubisprime
August 20, 2012 at 6:22 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Fucktoids like Akin are ten a penny…the real problem is that brain dead jeebus droolers vote for ignorance every time.
The dumb led by the dumber is generally just jeebus sunbeams at play in context, after all Akin is not the only cretin on senatorial pay scales, but the dumber in this instance is a downright liability to humanity and to the female of the species in particular.
The doofus actually thinks he is relevant and mainstream.
Methinks the US of A is righteously screwed if that is in anyway accurate.
Hairy Chris, blah blah blah etc
August 20, 2012 at 6:29 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Pretty much back to the middle ages. Literally.
Fucktard.
jamessweet
August 20, 2012 at 7:16 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
That just goes to show that the vast majority (95%) of reported rapes are “legitimate”. See, this guy is downright progressive!
jamessweet
August 20, 2012 at 7:21 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Well, for sake of argument, let’s say for whatever reason that for whatever reason there was a huge selective pressure against becoming pregnant due to rape. If that were the case, it’s not at all implausible that an adaptation would develop which would make pregnancy highly unlikely if the woman were experiencing a flight-or-fight response during intercourse.
It’s just that, you know, none of that is actually the case. But I don’t think it’s at all biologically implausible that such an adaptation could develop under the right conditions.
d cwilson
August 20, 2012 at 8:34 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
A PA state lawmaker floated this idea back in the late eighties. He even claimed that the trauma caused women to secrete a “sperm killing hormone”.
I shit you not.
dean
August 20, 2012 at 11:05 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
It isn’t clear at all that he was addressing the magic anti-pregnancy shield he mentioned in his first comment.
It seems he’s saying he is sorry because he didn’t sound sympathetic enough to rape victims. Nothing here says he’s admitting his belief is wrong.
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