Missouri Republican Rep. Todd Akin claimed this weekend that women who are victims of "legitimate" rape can avoid pregnancy because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” For once, there is no-one to defend the dumb: Akin's sheer insanity has even fellow conservatives calling for him to disappear. Fun fact! Akin sits on the House Committee for Science.

  • http://capl.washjeff.edu/ capl

    This isn’t the first time a Republican lawmaker “misspoke”
    http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Lawmaker-Says-Rape-Can-t-Cause-Pregnancy-3036411.php

  • Snig

    While as absolutely horrible as it was for a 65 year old adult in modern times in a developed country to say this, for as absolutely horrible as it was for that person to be a Congressman, at least some people may learn some basic biology. 

    • http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai

      It is no accident that these are the same people who oppose sex ed.

      • http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby

        And ‘ed’.

      • http://twitter.com/DJ_Solar_Bear Jason Carl

        And want to pass creationism off as a legitimate way to understand our world.

        • http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai

          Weird how they all seem to be part of a package deal…

  • azzy23

    Correction: There are defenders. :(

    Thus far, I’ve only seen CNN (and Breitbart.com)’s Dana Loesch (not a surprise there) and Politico’s Dave Catanese (and a bunch of rando comments).

    The defense is a pretty standard “you misunderstood,” followed by “you’re overreacting,” then straight to comparing it with under uncomparable situations and criticizing the lack of outrage then (well, he might think rape victims are liars, but his opponent screwed up the economy! Where was your outrage THEN?!).

    At the end of it all, it’ll be “They overreact to everything, he’s the real victim here!” until some democrat somewhere says “chains,” at which point, the entire thing will repeat itself, but from the other side.

    • http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai

      “Youze dames is all hysterical!  Youze gotta a wanderin’ uterus!” etc.

    • LinkMan

       If they’d just kept that aspirin more tightly clenched between their knees….

  • azzy23

    Sorry, I hit post too soon.

    I wanted to add the only thing that makes THIS GUY’S COMMENTS really troubling is that he has supported bills in the pass that attempt to redefine rape (HR3, using the phrase “forcible rape” to describe what type of rape the Hyde Amendment doesn’t apply to, implying there’s a lot of victims of “consensual rape” scamming the government for abortions) and he votes in lockstep with a party that has attempted over 1,000 pieces of legislation since Jan 2011, at the state and federal level, that attempt to prohibit, or in some other way negatively impact, women’s access to things like abortion, healthcare, cancer screenings, STD tests, standard well-woman care, and even necessary pre-natal information and care. THAT is the problem, not one jackass’ opinion of women as being lying sluts.

    Akin isn’t even the first Republican to make this very statement. Others have discussed, in panel, that women “secrete fluids” that kill sperm, or even that a rape victim NOT secreting fluids prevents conception. And let us not forget this:

    FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Napoli says most abortions are performed for what he calls “convenience.” He insists that exceptions can be made for rape or incest under the provision that protects the mother’s life. I asked him for a scenario in which an exception may be invoked.
    BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

    Digby has something up that’s worth reading: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/legitimate-rape-and-sodomized-virgin.html

    • http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai

      I mean, I would say that isn’t the ONLY thing– the fact that a grown adult can be so wrong, the perpetuation of rape culture, the dissemination of false information, etc– but the fact that he’s about to be able to legislate his own ill-informed & dangerous opinions IS pretty terrible.

      People’s ideas about women’s bodily autonomy are under attack through a massive campaign of propaganda.  It isn’t a surprise to find that the propaganda makes people think dumb things in order to try to justify the cognitive dissonance necessary to hold their position.

    • CH

      Um… religious virgin, “brutally raped, savaged”… that… um… to me that read more like a rape fantasy than a “real-life description”. I wonder how long time he has spent thinking about different “real-life descriptions” late at night, all alone.

    • Coderjoe

       To be fair, there are several different types of rape. There is Statutory Rape, in which both parties actually consent, but the law says that one or both parties were too young to legally give consent. Then there is Date Rape, which can be where the victim is so intoxicated as to be unable to consent or refuse. And then there is traditional Rape, which can either be violent or can be where the victim is coerced or intimidated in some way into compliance. This can also include where the rapist has some position of power over the victim (such as teacher/student) and the rapist doesn’t actually say anything to coerce, but the victim mentally creates it (“nobody would believe me” and/or “if I say something, I’ll get in trouble”). (and then some people would then, unfortunately, mistake that compliance as consent.)

      • Antinous / Moderator

        But they’re all rape.

        • Coderjoe

          And I was replying to a comment talking specifically about “forcible rape” vs “consensual rape”. Statutory rape where all directly-involved parties give their consent can be seen as the latter. The law in that case is what defines it as rape.

  • fuzzyfuzzyfungus

    I have read about some actual science (as in both ‘done by actual scientists’ and ‘examining an interesting question in non-human model species, not for domestic policymaking use, FFS’) examining the question of whether there are any such mechanisms in mammals. Given the wildly disparate metabolic costs of producing viable young, between male and female, it would be a useful feature, so people have gone hunting to see if anything has it…

    At a political level, though? This guy is doing one part YEC-does-geology mixed with a distinct strain of Deuteronomy 22 “if you are in town and nobody hears your screams, it obviously wasn’t rape, to death with you” moralizing. If they actually elect this guy…

    • ocker3

       The vagina can actually be a pretty hostile place for sperm, so ejaculate often does strange things after it enters, but there’s certainly no accepted mechanism for a vagina to completely reject ‘unwanted’ sperm based on the woman’s emotional state. A feotus may be miscarried if the woman experiences too much stress, but that’s quite different to rejecting sperm, it has a hugely greater physical and emotional cost. 50 shades of stupidity.

      • http://twitter.com/colinrosenthal Colin Rosenthal

        All very interesting, but insofar as there is any evidence at all, it points in precisely the opposite direction: http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2012/08/19/your-chance-of-getting-pregnant-if-raped/

      • retepslluerb

        A feotus may be miscarried if the woman experiences too much stress,

        Great! Did you have to tell him?  Now he’ll charge women who experience too much stress with murder…

        Because, y’know, they could drink a tea and pray and stay at home.

    • kgb

      I vaguely remember some studies from the sociobiology literature that support the claim that there is a statistically significant difference in incidence of pregnancy in rape victims compared to non rape victims. But if he’s relying on the notion of statistical significance for justification then his membership to the  House Committee for Science is farcical. Statistical significance is a far cry from clinical significance and neither are particularly good minimum thresholds for making policy (or life) recommendations.

      • IronEdithKidd

        This rube sitting on the House Committee for Science may be farcical, but you can bet your last dollar it’s intentional. 

        The religious-right’s quest for a new Dark Age marches on unabated.

      • fuzzyfuzzyfungus

        Oh, don’t get me wrong, this guy is hitting the old testament misogeny good and hard, possibly with a dose of YEC-ish ‘but the “science” in my carefully constructed reality-proof sphere says so!’. I merely thought it was worth mentioning that there has been some active looking at the question, often in nonhuman mammals.

  • http://www.nunoncastors.co.uk/ James

    I … what? Is this an article from the Onion? Am I falling for an elaborate prank here?

    • howaboutthisdangit

      Some stories are too absurd, even for The Onion.

      • max00

        Also,  The Onion is generally in fairly good taste.

        • Jamie Norwood

          It really is getting harder and harder to tell that The Onion is fake. Sometimes, I can’t help but feel that in a kind of reverse Poe, that some politicians read The Onion for /inspiration/. 

  • http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby

    This guy doesn’t even sound qualified to work at McDonalds, let alone in politics.

    • http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

      Unfortunately a pervasive phenomenon in this country is that a lot of people who aren’t qualified to work at McDonald’s get jobs in politics.

  • Chuck

    Maybe he’s been confused all this time and believes we’re all ducks.

  • atimoshenko

    Akin loves rapists.

    Let’s not overcomplicate things…

    • Guido

      THIS.

      I hate that people are even discussing if his claims are legitimate, or even close to based in reality. They are NOT.

    • Wreckrob8

      As long as he keeps it Platonic….

  • http://twitter.com/Nickpheas Nick Eden

    And there was me thinking vagina dentata were no longer considered real science.

  • elisabeththeunpublished

    13th Century Boys:
    Republicans are coming to your house to make you throw your contraceptives out.
    There they are, waiting around with a trans-vaginal probe ultrasound.
    Ladies better listen to the GOP and keep an aspirin between your knees.
    The Old Boys Club has gone to work and soon you won’t be allowed to leave the house without a burqa…

  • Bearpaw01

    He’s essentially saying that if the woman gets pregnant, it wasn’t really rape. That’s the sort of bullshit a rapist would use as part of their rationalization.

    Which might make one wonder about Rep. Akin’s past.

  • corydodt

    > for Science

    He thought he was joining the House Committee Against Science, but his reading comprehension is as good as his science.

  • SamSam

    Just the very phrase “legitimate rape” tell you an awful lot about these kinds of scum. These are the kinds of people who believe that most rape isn’t “legitimate rape,” and that most of the victims must have somehow wanted it. Disgusting. 

    • cymk

       So does this mean they also believe in “legitimate murder” or “legitimate hate crimes”?

      • CH

        Well… I would guess murder would be legitimate, as they themselves or somebody they know could be murdered. The victims of hate crime could just change their religion, color, or sexual orientation to something a bit more normal, so that would at least fall under “their own damned fault”. And rape… well… they must have done _something_ wrong to get raped, right? Proper upstanding girls don’t get raped (I don’t think they have the capasity of getting that men/boys can get raped, too.), which would have counted as “legitimate rape”… so… hmm…

  • Alan

    Good news is he’s running for US Senate against a woman incumbent.  Bad news is she barely won her last election, and there are enough rednecks in Missouri to actually believe this guy.

  • melvin polatnick

    Pity the young lady who is pulled into a dark alley and raped after returning from midnight mass. Abortion in Missouri is illegal and the young lady if pregnant should bear the child. The pervert must be caught; having lady decoys placed at the entrances to dark alleys at midnight will bait the rapist. No longer will he be able to force a woman to bear his child. Akin must be supported; he will catch the degenerates before they victimize the innocent, ending the need for Rape-Abortions. With strong hands Akin will yank rapists out their dark alleys and stop the epidemic of forced pregnancies.

    • CH

      Hmm… well he could just make a law forcing the rapist to marry the poor young now-pregnant lady, so she will again be an honest lady. Problem solved, everybody is happy! Right?

      • Coderjoe

         And that could even go right along with the laws laid out in his holy book!

  • https://twitter.com/misterjayem MrJM

    Among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year. 

    1) http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/consequences.html
    2) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8765248

  • https://twitter.com/misterjayem MrJM

    In 2011, Todd Akin & GOP VP nominee Paul Ryan co-sponsored a bill to redefine the meaning of the word “rape”

    http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/08/todd-akin-paul-ryan-redefining-rape

  • oldtaku

    The female uterus has many amazing powers: http://www.theawl.com/2012/08/todd-akin-uterus-facts

    (the male uterus is withered and vestigial)

    • llazy8

      I know some men whose uteri are just dandy.