Conservative lawmaker thinks victims of “legit rape” never get pregnant


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.

Comments

  1. 'Tis Himself says

    from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare

    I didn’t know Liberty University had a medical school.

  2. piegasm says

    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?

  3. says

    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.

  4. carlie says

    the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.

    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.

  5. Pierce R. Butler says

    One of his fellow wingnuts has suggested that “legitimate real 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.

  6. David Marjanović says

    I didn’t know Liberty University had a medical school.

    “I didn’t go to Evil Medical School to be called ‘Mister’, thankyouverymuch.”

    wouldn’t that be a self-abortion, then?

    …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!

    Pass the bucket please, I[‘d] like to puke too.

    Seconded.

  7. soul_biscuit, attorney at LOL says

    “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

    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.

  8. didgen says

    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.

  9. dan4 says

    @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.”

  10. dan4 says

    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.”

  11. says

    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.

  12. earwig says

    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.

  13. Christoph Burschka says

    So after “not rape if you were aroused” now we get “not rape if you got pregnant”.

    … yeah, I have nothing.

  14. says

    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.

  15. Randomfactor says

    He now “misspoke,” which means he retroactively said something different. Except he didn’t.

  16. Randomfactor says

    That guy is a potential “law maker”?

    What “potential”? He’s in Congress NOW.

  17. says

    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.

  18. anubisprime says

    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.

  19. jamessweet says

    I wonder if the doctors he’s heard from ever read the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology?

    RESULTS: The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (aged 12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year.

    That just goes to show that the vast majority (95%) of reported rapes are “legitimate”. See, this guy is downright progressive!

  20. jamessweet says

    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.

    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.

  21. d cwilson says

    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.

  22. dean says

    He now “misspoke,” which means he retroactively said something different. Except he didn’t.

    It isn’t clear at all that he was addressing the magic anti-pregnancy shield he mentioned in his first comment.

    “In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it’s clear that I misspoke in this interview and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year,” Akin’s statement said.

    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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