Todd Akin of Missouri has discovered scientific justification for denying abortions for women who claim they were made pregnant by a rapist. Through means he refused to reveal, he learned that a woman who is the victim of “legitimate” rape can “shut the whole thing down” and escape pregnancy.
Akin is a six-term member of Congress who won the Republican nomination to oppose Sen. Claire McCaskill, a moderate Democrat seeking re-election in November.
His incredibly ignorant statement drew immediate condemnation from Republicans across the land, including Mitt Romney and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. Cornyn chairs the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. He reacted to the event by telling Akin the $5 million advertising campaign planned to support him had been canceled. Cornyn also advised Akin to withdraw from the race.
Akin refused, at least for the moment, saying — not exactly in these words — that he may be stupid, but is no quitter.
While this remarkable story has elements of leg-slapping humor to it, Rep. Akin’s “science” has its serious side. He has won six congressional elections with anti-abortion rhetoric, which 100 pastors who support him have labeled “Bible-based.”
His statement on rape and pregnancy reveals his approach to medical science: Fact one, abortion is evil; fact two, some women who become pregnant after being raped seek abortions; fact three, since abortion and rape are both bad, but pregnancy is good, “legitimate” rape therefore cannot cause pregnancy, so no abortion should be permitted.
To be clear about it, Akin assumes a woman is somehow compliant with an act of rape if she becomes pregnant by it.
THAT A MAN so contemptuous of women has been elected and re-elected to Congress six times and was chosen to run for the U.S. Senate by a plurality of Republican voters in Missouri should ring alarm bells across the land.
His nomination makes a mockery of democracy.
True, when he put his unfitness on national display, he was immediately condemned by thinking Republicans. But, for crying out loud, Akins has been helping write the laws of the land since 2000. Wasn’t anyone in Missouri paying attention? Are claims to be supremely anti-abortion, coupled with the ability to thump the Bible louder than anyone else, all the qualification needed to represent half a million Missourians in Congress?
More to the point, why does the Republican Party allow such a witless zealot to wear its label?
Our political parties should do a much better job of vetting candidates. Party labels should mean something. Those who wear them should be men and women capable of helping to manage the most powerful and most respected nation on earth.
Todd Akin falls very far short of meeting that demand. Kansans of both parties should study Missouri and learn.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
