Representative Todd Akin of Missouri is undoubtably an idiot, a blow hard, and a member of the American Taliban, but he did the American public a solid favor when he revealed the true attitudes of the current GOP leadership. Let’s put aside for the moment the stone stupid idea that women’s “lady parts” are magic and can discriminate between a rapist’s sperm, and the sperm deposited by consensual sex. I would expect nothing less from a party that glories in ignorance and the denigration of science.
Instead let’s talk about this new trend in Republican circles to parse the meaning of “rape”. There is “legitimate” rape in the words of Rep. Akin which implies there is also illegitimate rape, what ever the hell that might be. In the language used in a federal bill that was presented to the house, and co-sponsored by Paul Ryan, Romney’s V.P. pick, it is called “forcible” rape. In the case of forcible rape an exception will be allowed to the ban on the use of federal funds to pay for abortions. But who decides if a rape is forcible? Does a woman have to beaten within an inch of her life before a rape is forcible? Does she have to fight even if her attacker has a gun to her head or a knife to her throat? Is the Republican argument that a decent woman will fight and die rather than surrender her virtue?
And let’s take apart this argument that a woman’s body can prevent a sperm from reaching an egg. If a rape victim ends up pregnant, then ipso facto by Republican logic it must not have been a legitimate rape. In a real rape the magic lady parts spring into action. So now the victim has been victimized twice over. First at the hands of her rapist, and now by a Republican administration that declares that she must of wanted it or enjoyed it or she wouldn’t have ended up pregnant. Here’s the actual science — 5% of all sexual contacts both consensual and forced result in pregnancy.
The current plank in the GOP platform proposes a Constitutional Amendment to ban all abortions. No exceptions for rape, incest or life of the mother. So here comes the third victimization. A woman will be forced to bear her attacker’s child, go through the rigors of pregnancy and childbirth without being allowed to make that choice. I guess in this Republican theocracy she can always resort to the back alleys for an illegal abortion, and risk death or becoming infertile from a botched abortion.
In my relative small circle of friends I know three women who have been raped. Sit with that for a minute. Three. Mercifully none of them ended up pregnant, but what if they had?The Republicans always rail against government intrusion, but here they would place the government square in a deeply personal and painful decision. It’s amazing. This is a party that wants to regulation of Wall Street and big banks, no EPA, etc., but they want to insert themselves in women’s vaginas. That’s what I call government intrusion.
Just to lighten the mood check out this video from Funny or Die. It puts all this madness in perspective.
Listening to Aiken’s statements on NPR this morning really ticked me off.
Aiken still doesn’t seem to actually understand what he said wrong. He is going on about “One word” being the cause of his problems. No, it wasn’t that one word, it was all of the other words surrounding the word “legitimate”. His basic assertion (that he still supports as near as I can tell) that rape doesn’t cause pregnancy is just simply wrong. Unequivocally wrong.
Hopefully this wrongness will sway enough moderates to vote for his opponent and hopefully, people will see that his views seem to be shared by a troubling number of other far right conservatives and this will cause problems for them at a national level (Paul Ryan and Steve King, I’m looking your way).
I hope you’re right, Steve, that this will be a wake up call, and people will actually look at the GOP and their extreme views. I have never seen a party “bring the stupid” quite like this current GOP. And it’s crazy. They used to be the sober, serious party. I always think of Livingston’s wonderful song from 1776, “Cool, Cool, Considerate Men”. That is sure not this modern GOP.
I am a voter who wants major change from the decirtion of increased size and scope of government under the Obama administration (and also the Bush administration both administrations increased the size and power of the federal government).But I’m not satisfied with the GOP’s pledge to America. Why?I strongly support minimal government and fiscal conservatism, but I also I care very deeply about environmental issues I think sustainability is the #1 challenge facing America right now. I also think sustainability and our economic woes go hand in hand. We are in the hole economically because we have been living unsustainably. The ballooning national debt is probably the biggest example of unsustainable living it’s borrowing from future generations the same way polluting the environment is borrowing from future generations.The GOP’s pledge to America does not even mention sustainability or the environment. I do not understand why the GOP and conservatives in American cannot band together with the goal of protecting the environment? Why let democrats and liberals own this issue?I explained in a recent blog post that I think that there are just as many (if not more) ways to approach sustainability from a conservative perspective.Where does this leave me? Is there anyone I can vote for? I’m forced to support a fringe, third-party candidate who probably has next to no chance of winning. That’s why I’m trying to get the debate going among conservatives and liberals liberals need to address the fiscal conservative issue, and conservatives need to make a commitment to sustainability. The two go hand in hand!