By now you’ve probably heard that in an interview released today, Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri, the Republican nominee for Senate, said that women’s bodies had an innate but unspecified mechanism that prevented pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape.” Presumably, everyone reading this knows that as important as consent is, it is not a prerequisite for conception. Read More
Senate nominee and Rep. Todd Akin has now issued a statement in response to his “legitimate rape” conception remarks. He says he misspoke and how much he empathizes with the victims of rape.
But as you can see he doesn’t actually address the center of the controversy — his claim that if women are really raped (“legitimate rape”) they have biological defenses that prevent conception.
From a messaging perspective, his staff clearly wants to blow past the whole with a generic statement of good faith. (Because really, what’s he (or they) going to say? ‘I believe this completely crazy theory that women’s bodies reject sperm from men they don’t consent to sex with but now that everyone’s freaking out I realize it must not be true’?) He doesn’t disavow the original statement at all. Which leaves the obvious question unaddressed: does Akin really believe that women have an innate defense against pregnancy if they don’t consent to intercourse?
Some conservative pros already calling for Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) to withdraw as the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate over his “legitimate rape” comments.
The Romney campaign has now issued what sounds like a relatively tepid statement saying the team ‘disagrees’ with Akin and would note oppose abortion in cases of rape.
Two quick things I want to let you know about coming up soon at TPM.
This week we’re going to be joined in the Editors’ Blog by Rick Hasen, the guy who knows more about the on-going voter fraud / voter ID / voter suppression story than anyone I know. Rick’s a law professor at UC Irvine and he’ll be discussing his new book The Voting Wars as well as how these issues are now playing out in the 2012 cycle.
Next week we’ll be joined by Mike Grunwald who will be discussing his new book The New New Deal, his account of the 2009 ‘Stimulus Bill’ which set the stage on which so much of President Obama’s presidency has played out.
TPM Reader SR on “legitimate rape” and Akin’s commonplace reasoning …
Growing up, my political affiliations were tied to the political views of my parents, as they are for most people. My dad was apolitical, while my mom was a single-issue voter: Pro-Life. St. Louis is a very Catholic, very Pro-Life town, or at least it was in the 80s and 90s, when we lived there and participated in all of the marches and pickets. So, I grew up awash in the Pro-Life reasoning, and this idea of “real rape” (typically defined as the stranger assaulting the victim in a violent manner) preventing pregnancy was the standard response to the Pro-Choice argument about making exceptions for rape and incest.
Shorter McCaskill: Trying to take Akin off the ticket would be almost as outrageous as his comments!!
Thanks so much to Josh and the TPM crew for the opportunity to guest blog this week about my new book, The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown.
The book explains how and why the battles over election rules and ballot counting have become much so worse since the 2000 Florida debacle.
As TPM readers well know, election time brings out inevitable accusations by political partisans of voter fraud and voter suppression.
But that’s only part of the story. Read More