In criticizing controversial comments made by former Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, a California GOP leader ceded Friday that pregnancies by rape are rare “because it’s an act of violence, because the body is traumatized.”
“That was an insensitive remark,” Celeste Greig told the Bay Area News Group. “I’m sure he regretted it. He should have come back and apologized.”
Greig is president of the conservative California Republican Assembly, a GOP volunteer organization that Ronald Reagan coincidentally once called “the conscience of the Republican Party.”
However, in shades of Akin, Greig then added: “Granted, the percentage of pregnancies due to rape is small because it’s an act of violence, because the body is traumatized. I don’t know what percentage of pregnancies are due to the violence of rape. Because of the trauma the body goes through, I don’t know what percentage of pregnancy results from the act.”
Rep. Todd Akin’s campaign against Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) imploded last year after he justified his opposition to abortion rights even in case of rape with a claim that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy.
“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin said in August. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
h/t HuffPo
