Todd Akin on the scourge of doctors giving abortions to non-pregnant women

[Video Link] Salon: Among “abortionists,” Akin said in a floor speech in 2008, “you find that along with the culture death go all kinds of other lawbreaking: the not following good sanitary procedure, giving abortions to women who aren’t actually pregnant, cheating on taxes, all these kinds of things.” Later in the video Akin accuses death culture doctors of killing imaginary unicorns.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

MORE: Wingnuts

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux

He’s a right wing pigeon from outer space
Sent here to destroy the human race
- http://twitter.com/beep54orama B E Pratt
  
  Please! Do not denigrate pigeons in the way. pigeons might be stupid, but at least they are above Akin in intelligence.
CSBD

Luckily for him, conspiring to violate the civil rights of 51% of the population is not a “crime”.

Also… he is lucky that there are no laws pertaining to lying in congress or clinical stupidity.
- morcheeba
  
  I’m eager to read his study where he shows the statistical evidence that women’s health care providers violate the tax code more often than the general population? Or doctors in general?
  - PTBartman
    
    …or politicians and politician wannabes
Mister44

I can’t watch CSPANN because of shit like this. It is just amazing some of the things that come from these peoples’ mouths. They ramble on to the point of making no sense at times. Other times they have such flawed arguments, they would get an F in any high school.
- http://www.jimdraws.com Thorzdad
  
  Scarily, they are merely aping the beliefs of many of their constituents. Especially among the religious right, there are many people who will believe the most off-the-wall idiocy, so long as it’s turned against their self-imagined enemies…abortion doctors, liberals, Muslims, evolutionists, etc.
  
  Mass-self-delusion driven to the point of fervent political mobilization. Scares the hell out of me, frankly, seeing as I live in the midst of this sort of thing here in small-town Indiana. I see it a lot here.
  - http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
    
    It’s like the country got inceptioned to be hysterically stupid.
  - absimiliard
    
    “Especially among the religious right, there are many people who will believe the most off-the-wall idiocy, so long as it’s turned against their self-imagined enemies…”
    
    Just thought I’d note that while I agree entirely with you on this we should also acknowledge that the same is true of the extremes on the left as well. I think it’s less about religion or being on the right/left and more about “If you are on an extreme you are probably not thinking clearly.”
    
    -abs isn’t sure he’s really thought this out fully, the “why” that is, but he can point to at least two of his good friends who really hate everything any non-Democrat has done (including good works like Bush’s anti-AIDS programs for Africa) and will support anything any Democrat does (like killing American citizens via drones without any oversight, much less a trial)
    - http://twitter.com/KEdwardK Keith Edwards
      
      There’s no Lefty equivalent to the Birthers, the Tea Party, Fox News anchors and pundits, or your average GOP member, let alone the likes of Todd Akin. The closest were the 9/11 Truthers, and they were smacked down and pushed back to the fringe, not financed by George Soros and elected to the Senate. Two ill-informed friends who are partisan Democrats does not constitute a vast left wing conspiracy, unless they have their own national news network repeating their unfounded claims 24/7.
      - screwt
        
        er…
        
        The Occupy movement looks just as extreme as the Tea Party does.
        
        The extremes of the 9/11 conspiracy, environmentalist, homeopathy, …, movements are at least as loony as the Birthers.
        
        I agree there’s nothing equivalent to Fox (nothing with as much influence, anyway). Though BoingBoing tries ;-)
        
        Really not trying to start a flamewar here – at least several of the groups above are ones I’m sympathetic to. But it’s important to recognise that to someone in the centre, the fringes all look equally loony.
      - screwt
        
        … and just to be clear and so as not to start a massive flame war, I am only talking about the extremes. So e.g. by “extreme envirnomentalist” I *don’t mean “someone who accepts global warming is real” – I mean more like those who say we should all go back to living in caves because it’s “natural”.
        
        The main point I’m trying to make is those of us on the left look as extreme to those in the centre as those on the right. Peace.
        
        oh, and yopu ‘mercans are all right-wing loonies anyway. x
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        The main point I’m trying to make is those of us on the left look as extreme to those in the centre as those on the right.
        
        And, of course, appearances are everything. Why bother to have any ethics at all when you can just have your PR flaks do some focus groups to make your positions palatable to the lowest common denominator?
      - Mitchell Glaser
        
        Please show me the web page of the extreme homeopathists. That would be quite amusing. “Drink this water or die!”
      - PTBartman
        
        America, where we tie our fringe in little loopys
      - Mark_Frauenfelder
        
        I’m also sick of those millions back-to-the-cave zealots who wage campaigns to get enough caver supreme court justices on the bench to force us back to paleolithic lifestyle.
      - Thad Boyd
        
        The Occupy movement looks just as extreme as the Tea Party does.
        
        The extremes of the 9/11 conspiracy, environmentalist, homeopathy, …, movements are at least as loony as the Birthers.
        
        But like the man already said:
        
        they were smacked down and pushed back to the fringe, not financed by George Soros and elected to the Senate.
        
        Simply, none of those groups are equivalent to the Tea Party in influence or mainstream acceptance.
        
        I DO agree with the larger point that partisans fall in line with their parties. It disappoints me greatly to see people who condemned Bush for gutting due process stay silent when Obama continues the practice; it’s every bit as disingenuous as Republicans only caring about budget deficits when a Democrat is President.
      - Navin_Johnson
        
        Truther types have always struck me as more anti-government, Ron Paul-ish types if they can be tied down to some place on the political spectrum. I think they’re kind of neither though, like a lot of conspiracy fanatics.
      - Navin_Johnson
        
        What is as comparatively extreme about Occupy that puts it in the same place the totally imaginary lies this congressman is telling?
      - s2redux
        
        Mitchell Glaser: “Please show me the web page of the extreme homeopathists…”
        
        Here ya go.
      - ocker3
        
        They are nowhere near as mainstreamed or respected as on the right. Occupy intentionlly didn’t ally with GetUp to maintain their independance, whereas the Tea Party is linked with so many parts of the GOP machine now.
      - Boundegar
        
        That’s a false equivalence. The Occupiers look extreme because the MSM made them look extreme. That’s because their one demand was that bankers who destroyed the economy with fraud be put on trial – and we can’t have that. So the reporters searched around until they found one ranting loon among them, found one allegation of rape, and let those be the stories.
        
        Also, how many US Reps self-identify as Tea Party? A couple dozen, and they set the agenda for the Republican Party. How many Occupiers are there in Congress? Any?
      - http://twitter.com/bradbelltv Brad Bell
        
        The Occupy movement is about prosecuting economy-destroying fraud by the banks. Most economists across the spectrum agree the economy can’t recover until trust is restored, which will require prosecutions and changes to the law.
        
        Very bipartisan issue – as moderate as it gets.
        
        And also very current and global: see Spain and Greece crash and burn on page 5.
      - http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog
        
        I’m guessing you’ve never encountered the RCP.
        
        (Not much of a comparison, granted, as they don’t have a sympathetic news network giving them a lot of airtime and sympathy)
      - robotnik
        
        Royal College of Physicians?
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        I believe that the RCP’s membership numbers in the dozens. The low dozens. If they get any press, it’s Fox using them to try to make it sound like there’s a radical left wing in the US.
      - Gilbert Wham
        
        ^^^This. I’m sick of this ridiculous false equivalency.
      - absimiliard
        
        I never claimed that there was some vast left wing conspiracy Keith. I said that irrationality is not just a quality that extremists on the right possess, but that it’s a quality that extremists on both sides possess.
        
        -abs does appreciate you attempting to argue his point for him, but in the future please don’t put words in his mouth because you’re not very good at accuracy
      - http://twitter.com/KEdwardK Keith Edwards
        
        Sure,but my point is, Lefty extremists don’t have representation in the US Congress, whereas Right Wing extremists do. There’s no Truthers in the Senate, or homeopathic hardliners in the House. ELF doesn’t have sympathetic politicians quoting their manifestos into the Senate minutes.
        
        The crazies on the left are a handful of voices writing blogs, shouting in the digital wilderness. The Right Wing crazies have an entire cable network devoted to making their varied and nutty ideas palatable. There’s no comparison.
  - Mitchell Glaser
    
    Too true. A huge portion of American voters believe, for instance, that Obama is a Muslim. Either they cannot be bothered to seek reasonable sources of information, or they believe what they want to believe. Either way, what does it say about our democracy? Do such people deserve the right to vote?
    - Thad Boyd
      
      Do such people deserve the right to vote?
      
      It’s not a question of whether they deserve it. It’s a right. When you start talking about restricting the right to vote then you start standing on one hell of a slippery slope. Would you require a test for people to register to vote? It’s been done. It’s now unconstitutional. That’s because, like all attempts to suppress voting rights, it was used to disenfranchise minorities.
      
      We shouldn’t be talking about whether or not a class of people “deserves the right to vote”, no matter how deluded they may be. We should talk about how to reach that class of people, or, if we’re to give them up as a lost cause, how to reach OTHER people to offset those ill-informed votes.
      
      The answer to the problems with our democracy is MORE participation, not less.
    - Steve Miller
      
      “Muslim” is being used as a code word. It ain’t about religion.
    - Navin_Johnson
      
      They believe that because our democratic system is broken and corrupted by propaganda and lies which are allowed by ridiculous notions of “free speech”. Apart from that the electoral college gives these rural/red state types a disproportionate advantage.
http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm

I’m not sure which parallel reality Todd Akin is living in, but I wish he’d go and write legislation there and leave our universe alone.
- http://twitter.com/muskieratboi Muskie the Otterboi
  
  But think of the poor parallel universe versions of us who have to live with him!
- http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog
  
  Actually such inter-dimensional banishment suggests an interesting idea as to what he’s doing in this universe, and how/why he got here.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1353050764 Kelly Pratt

What a jackass, the fundamental right to “life” has nothing to do with living. Why do you think we still have the death penalty or send men and women to war, or prevent starvation? Life means the freedom to make a living without interference of the government – to which I say we are far from these days with a government out of control filled with jackasses like this.
simonbarsinister

I’m just curious… if a doctor gives an abortion to a woman that isn’t pregnant, then no harm has been done, right? I mean there was no baby in the first place, so there was no baby to harm, right?

I have invented a pill that does just this. It is the “Morning Before Pill.” Take it when you are not pregnant and I guarantee you will not have a baby.
- lknope
  
  Yeah, by definition an abortion aborts a pregnancy so if there is no pregnancy to abort how can it even be considered an abortion?
  
  I totally have a cure for your cancer as long as you are cancer-free!
- http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
  
  but that’s still SOCIALISM
- fuzzyfuzzyfungus
  
  I’m assuming that this is intended to provide a medicaid/insurance fraud angle to the more typical “Abortionists kill babies to make $$$$ in the death/industrial complex!!!” screed, or possibly to serve as an additional instance of how the abortionists (and their allies in the ‘liberal media’) are truly masters of deceit who prey on women who would just bear their shame as god intended were it not for the trickery and lies of the abortion complex.
- CH
  
  It would expose the woman to the risks of a D&C procedure.
  - dragonfrog
    
    When the patient is not pregnant, lower-risk abortion procedures are available.
    
    For instance, homeopathic abortions are effective at that point, and have no side effects whatsoever! A sample of a baby’s bathwater, diluted to 1/1000 purity 20 times over, ingested by the patient, will very effectively result in a non-pregnant patient remaining non-pregnant, as long as she does not ingest it during sexual intercourse.
    - Mitchell Glaser
      
      Homeopathic abortion for the non-pregnant! That’s brilliant.
    - atimoshenko
      
      as long as she does not ingest it during sexual intercourse.
      
      Does that include phone sex?
      - dragonfrog
        
        Perhaps to be on the safe side in that case, rather than use a baby’s bath water, a phone should be given a bath while a baby is on the other end of the line.
      - jetfx
        
        That’s sexual discourse.
- Gilbert Wham
  
  It’s chloral hydrate, isn’t it?
  - simonbarsinister
    
    No, Sodium Chloride.
fuzzyfuzzyfungus

Oh Todd, don’t you know that the Culture Of Death is Lawful Evil? It’s the racially degenerate welfare-queen underclass that is Chaotic Evil, and the leftist college professors who are Neutral Evil (frequently masquerading as Neutral Neutral in order to more effectively destroy the moral compass of our youth)…

C’mon, man, you have to understand the sinister division of labor that liberalism has cooked up in order to destroy America that much faster.
- Mantissa128
  
  Chaotic evil means never having to say you’re sorry.
  - Gilbert Wham
    
    Oh, I am SO stealing that…
capnmarrrrk

The sad part is that he’s probably going to win Missouri. A lot of Missourians are going to vote for him because he’s the anti-Clare McCaskill candiate. The local Fox Affiliate radio station has been working hard whipping up a “He made a 6 second mistake vs 6 years of not being Clare McCaskill” storyline, completely ignoring the fact that he’s Bat-Shit Insane.

What really drives the point is that a lot of people say he’s speaking the truth of the GOP Party Platform in regards to Social Conservatism (jargon speak meaning Fundamentalism), and that’s why they’re going to vote for him.
- Thad Boyd
  
  The latest poll I can find offhand says he’s up by 1% — that’s not exactly a huge lead but it’s pretty depressing to see that it’s even close.
lknope

Akin is so right. I hear it was an abortionist who convinced Romney to cheat on his taxes.
robdobbs

I feel terrorized just watching him – also, Hitler.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=3210773 Nathan E. Milos

Key comment: “There will come a day when *men* will say who would ever do something like abortion.” He seems to have carefully forgotten to include women in this discussion of a woman’s body.
- IronEdithKidd
  
  In case you haven’t noticed, in the fundamentalist Christian universe, we (women) are not even people. We are walking wombs in servitude to the ever-wise men that own us. That’s why the life of a embryo takes primacy over that of the adult female.
raleighstclair

God is an American
- Kevin Pierce
  
  “In Todd We Trust”
Chuck

He’s obviously referring to abortions given to the pre-pregnant women in Arizona.
- Chuck
  
  The whole concept of Schrodinger’s Womb may get a whole lot more complicated when you introduce abortions as a factor.
- Mitchell Glaser
  
  Life begins at Last Call.
Brainspore

I’m so sick and tired of all these trillions of taxpayer dollars going to fund the lifestyles of recreational abortionists.
Kevin Pierce

That’s the longest 2½ minute speech I’ve ever heard. I pity the empty chairs that had to absorb its vibrations.
donovan acree

Holy same-as-it-ever-was Batman! This guy is as ignorant, insane, and megalomaniacle as the rest of the Senate.
http://twitter.com/CatherineOmega Catherine Winters

Is it possible Akin doesn’t actually know what an abortion is? Maybe he’s thinking of gynecology in general?
- Tess
  
  Maybe he thinks every single D&C is an abortion.
  
  Which, you know, they aren’t.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Who wants to be the person who explains to him the difference between a Spontaneous Abortion and a Therapeutic Abortion?
OldBrownSquirrel

My guess is that he’s aware of surgical procedures that can be used to carry out abortion (D&C, vacuum aspiration), is aware that surgical abortion can be described somewhat euphemistically by reference to the specific procedures involved, and is therefore conflating all these procedures with abortion, in all cases. It’s also implied that any doctor who would carry out any of these procedures for any purpose is an abortionist and therefore a scoundrel devoid of principles. So if a woman who recently had a miscarriage or who recently gave birth goes in to get some leftover bits of tissue removed, he’s spinning that as a woman who isn’t pregnant getting an abortion.

If there isn’t a war on women, then at the very least there’s a war on gynecology and obstetrics.
- http://paulbeard.org/wordpress paul beard
  
  More like a War on Reality.
Michael D

I guess he would be opposed to drone killings of innocent people, then. I wonder what he’s doing about that? Anyone noticed any speeches?
- jorgenfleisterman
  
  I think he’s okay with it as long as the drones don’t kill innocent people who are already dead. That would just be absurd.
- absimiliard
  
  But Michael, we all know there are no drone killings of innocent people. The administration’s definitions make it perfectly clear: If you were killed by a drone and can’t prove your innocence you were an enemy combatant.
  
  -abs doesn’t like it, and he didn’t call it that way, but the White House clearly does and did
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    This digression is now closed.
- Thad Boyd
  
  I guess he would be opposed to drone killings of innocent people, then.
  
  Of course he is. Because a Democrat is President.
Maureen

definitely read Clay, not Todd.
- Thad Boyd
  
  Now see, Clay has an excuse for not knowing how women’s health works.
tempo

As long as the doctors aren’t killing real unicorns, I’m cool.
disillusion

Hey guys, Idiocracy was meant to be a warning, not a documentary from the future.
http://daniel.friesen.name/ Daniel Friesen

“what we believe, that god gives people the right to life and then the right to liberty. The right to liberty is to be able to follow your own conscience without being terrorized by some opponent.”

Riiiiight… like the liberty to use one’s own conscience to decide whether an abortion is right for them or not without someone terrorizing them out of the ability to choose that… sounds like he’s making himself out to be a terrorist.
http://twitter.com/Natt Nathaniel Tapley

I like the fact that he sees abortion as “even more unAmerican” than slavery. That’s right: abortion is worse then slavery…
Stitch

It’s possible that he’s referring to doctors who perform abortions on women who have been raped and who thus are, ipso facto, not pregnant.
- jandrese
  
  I was starting to wonder when someone was going to make this comment.
billstreeter

Todd Akin says crazy things on a fairly regular basis. But that’s what crazy people do, I guess. Last spring he causes a bit of a shitstorm when he said that Liberals hate God.
teleny

Wow! It’s Fsck a Duck again! Now how does that go? Legal abortions are unsanitary. Doctors love scraping non-pregnant women why? Now how do you stand on sex education?
- Thad Boyd
  
  I tried to fsck a duck but I couldn’t figure out what filesystem it was formatted with.
Mister44

I just realized in some alternate universe, Akin has said all the right things and is elected President for Life.
Cowicide

And the hits keep coming from this idiot. Todd Akin now says that allowing businesses to pay women less than men for the same amount of work is “freedom”. What a dick.

Video, etc:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/01/todd-akin-women-pay_n_1928534.html
- IronEdithKidd
  
  Well, we’re not supposed to be working outside the home, anyway, because it means that we might be people.
vonbobo

“What is it that terrorists believe? Hey it’s ok to blow up a few people to make a political statement. And what do we believe? We believe right to life. It’s a fundamental god given right. We are on the completely opposite page of the terrorists.”

So our bombs are for liberty, and their bombs are for terrorism.

I’m so angry at our politicians… HULK SMASH!! >:(
Michael Walter

Much as I disagree with this man’s politics, it seems fairly clear to me that his statement here is being mischaracterized.

His argument is something like “Doctors who perform abortions are bad people and bad doctors, so they do other bad things, like: cheat on taxes, having bad sanitary procedure, misuse anesthetic and [attempt to give] abortions to people who aren’t actually pregnant.

He isn’t saying it’s possible to perform an abortion on someone who isn’t pregnant. His argument is that doctors willing to perform abortions are so bad as doctors that they could mistakenly attempt to perform an abortion on someone who wasn’t actually pregnant. Once he makes the statement about misuse of anesthesia killing people, I don’t think it’s possible to reasonably interpret his statements any other way.

Which is, of course, a ridiculous argument. But I think it’s worth engaging with what he means, rather than an out-of-context quote that twists his meaning. His statements are fatuous enough on their own merits to render this kind of manipulation unnecessary.
- http://www.facebook.com/heather.cristofaro Heather Cristofaro
  
  Is that satire? You just misquoted the part with “[attempt to give]“, which is_not_what_he said.
http://www.facebook.com/heather.cristofaro Heather Cristofaro

So if zygotes are the victims, and terrorists are doctors, what does that make women choosing to hire terrorists?

Also, real classy going back to old sexist bullshit about “dirty” gynecologists… he can’t even bring himself to use the word. Don’t forget ladies— anything to do with lady parts is filthy! Get the Lysol!
http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb

States have already been passing voter ID laws to protect against a nearly non-existent version of voter fraud. We should be consistent and pass laws to prevent doctors from performing abortions on women who aren’t pregnant, or who aren’t women, or who just had an abortion the week before.
Baldhead

I think it’s clear that no better example exists of the importance of proper sex education than Todd Akin. His knowledge of the subject brings to mind that of a particular character from A Bit of Fry and Laurie.
http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb

Akin demonstrates the common Republican tactic of “Why can’t you stand up, just because I have my boot on your neck?” (See also cuts to public education, followed by “See, public education isn’t very good!”)

He says, “…There are not enough heartless doctors being graduated from medical schools. There’s a real shortage of abortionists. Who wants to be at the very bottom of the food chain of the medical profession?”

The kind of people who tell us that abortionists are “heartless” and the bottom of the food chain are the people who make them feel like they are the bottom of the food chain. Med students are reasonable. They don’t want to get assassinated by supporters of inflammatory anti-abortion zealots like Akin. They know they won’t make much money providing a service that conservatives are piling more and more restrictions on. Potential abortion doctors know that fans of Akin might picket their house, put photos of aborted fetuses in their neighbors’ mail or cars or doorknobs, picket their kids’ schools, etc. Akin and anti-abortion activists vocally discourage doctors from performing abortions, and here he pretends that it’s some unrelated, natural development when med students avoid it.

“And what sort of places do these bottom of the food chain doctors work in? Places that are really a pit.”

If that is true, is it because they choose to operate in “pits,” or because they are relegated to ghettos by anti-abortion activists and ppl like Akin?
Anahata

Theoretically, “giving abortions to women who aren’t actually pregnant” is the one and only kind of abortion that Akin should support. No zygote is actually harmed.

Anyway, when actual abortions are performed, one of Romney’s Bain-funded companies will be there to dispose of the aborted remains.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/07/romney-led-bains-investment-firm-disposed-aborted-fetuses/54097/
ChickieD

Abortion is so much fun that I frequently pretend I got raped then go get one!! Come on you guys – never done that?? Just me?