There's not much anyone with any common sense can say about this, except that this is perhaps the unmitigated height of stupidity and insensitivity.
I don't think anyone knows exactly what a "legitimate rape" is. It's probably the same thing as Whoopi Goldberg's "rape rape." The fact that there's an established threshold before anyone takes rape seriously should make just about anyone throw up.
I've heard of theories about how the stress and trauma of rape supposedly cuts off the chemical and hormonal processes needed to facilitate pregnancy. The underlying implication here is that if you were really raped, your body wouldn't allow the fertilization process to continue. Therefore, if you become pregnant after you were raped, then you really weren't raped, were you? And if you want an abortion, that would make you some sort of slut, right? "Good girls" don't get themselves into those typ...*pauses to throw up*..es of situations.
I hope you had a barf bag on you. That stuff's hell to clean off a keyboard.
It's not just Akin who thinks this way. The GOP has successfully cultivated a legion of politicians who are absolutely retrograde when it comes to matters that affect women most. These people are stuck in the mindset that declares female autonomy over their own destinies and biological functions to be the greatest societal sin imaginable. To them, it just ain't right that women can make their own decisions about bringing new life into this world and protecting themselves from predatory assholes who not only mistake a woman's vagina for a 24-hour convenience store, but feel that if women didn't want their registers robbed, they shouldn't have been open in the first place. No, I don't understand that line of thinking, either.
And people wonder why rape remains one of the most under-reported crimes out there.
The GOP is insistent using the power of the federal government to lock down women's reproductive rights at the same time it's equally insistent on the power of the federal government to be vanquished in just about every other matter save for the country's ability to go to war. That definitely speaks to the rather fucked up priorities of conservatives nowadays.
It's not just Todd Akin who's busy refining rape to fit retrograde sensibilities. It's definitely worth mentioning that GOP vice-president candidate Paul Ryan was Akin's partner in crime when penning the infamous "forcible rape" language in the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act." Ryan himself believes that abortion should be illegal everywhere, under any circumstance. If you need an abortion to keep yourself alive due to pregnancy complications or if you don't want to carry a child conceived in rape to term, then you're all out of luck.* If you think you'll at least have birth control, don't. Ryan's against that, too.
None of this is about maintaining the well-being of women everywhere. If that were the case, this post wouldn't exist and neither would these attitudes. It's about maintaining control over women, a two-pronged process that involves shrinking women's autonomy over their own being via legislation while sanctioning society's shaming of women who remain determined to exercise their rights. The hoped result for many is a return to a society where women are seen (and fucked), but not heard. The menfolk are no longer threatened by women who are not only not impressed with their success and trappings, but are more than capable of creating their own. In this rather fucked-up scenario, women remain property passed on from father to husband (and if said husband or father dies, from uncle to brother-in-law).
Akin later issued out a boilerplate tweet that expressed regret over being excoriated over his comments:
"To be clear, all of us understand that rape can result in pregnancy & I have great empathy for all victims. I regret misspeaking."- Todd
— Todd Akin (@ToddAkin) August 19, 2012
Meanwhile, Dana Loesch thinks people, namely the Democrats, are making too much of a fuss over this issue. Loesch managed to write the book on abject stupidity on countless occasions, so there's no new ground being broken here. You'd think that even a conservative woman would recognize how wrong Akin's comments were. *sigh*
*Unless you travel to another country that's more than happy to get that done, but who's wealthy enough to make that happen?
