On Sunday, Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), who is challenging Sen. Claire McCaskill in the Missouri Senate race, used an interview with a local television station to defend his belief that abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape: He claimed that women who are the victims of "legitimate rape" are unlikely to become pregnant. Akin said that the female body has "biological defenses" that prevent rape victims from getting pregnant. (That's not true.) The implication of his position is that if you were raped and became pregnant, you must have actually wanted it—it wasn't really rape.
This isn't the first time Akin has expressed fringe views about rape in the context of the abortion debate. Last year, Akin, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and most of the House GOP co-sponsored a bill that would have narrowed the already-narrow exceptions to the laws banning federal funding for abortion—from all cases of rape to cases of "forcible rape."
After I reported on the "forcible rape" language in January 2011, a wave of outcry from abortion rights, progressive, and women's groups led the Republicans to remove it. But a few months later, in a congressional committee report, Republicans wrote that they believed the bill would continue to have the same effect despite the absence of the "forcible" language.
So why was the "forcible" language so important? Pro-life advocates believed they needed to include the word "forcible" in the law to preempt what National Right to Life Committee lobbyist Doug Johnson called a "brazen" effort by Planned Parenthood and other groups to obtain federal funding for abortions for any teenager by (falsely) claiming statutory rape. Abortion rights groups, Johnson warned, wanted to "federally fund the abortion of tens of thousands of healthy babies of healthy moms, based solely on the age of their mothers." Richard Doerflinger, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops'* top anti-abortion lobbyist, echoed Johnson in congressional testimony, arguing that the "forcible" language was "an effort on the part of the sponsors to prevent the opening of a very broad loophole for federally funded abortions for any teenager." Planned Parenthood flatly denied having a plan to open up such a loophole.
The idea that women who are "legitimate" rape victims can't get pregnant has currency in some corners of the fringe right. Akin embraces it. Does he embrace the conspiracy theory about the need for the "forcible rape" language, too?
*The name of the organization has been corrected.
By Nick Baumann, Sunday August 19th, 2012 3:21 PM PDT
Source
I think we're way overdue for a "war on women" tag. :)
Edited to add: We've got the tag! :D
Except, it's not the fringe. Look at pretty much every mainstream Republican's stance on rape. It's all variations on a theme of "if you don't meet [x requirement], it wasn't real'".
When you have an article of this length with this many references, it's not fringe anymore, sorry.
The idea that some rape victims are innocent and undeserving of the crime, whereas others deserve it, has been around for a long time. Particularly when it comes to think things like date rape, rape by ones partner or spouse, etc.
I suspect that anti-abortion groups and many Republicans have believed this for a very long time - it's just now being brought to the forefront of media attention.
So basically, anti-choicers are horrible people who believe horrible things.
Paul Ryan cosponsored a bill defining fertilized eggs as human beings, which his idol Ayn Rand thought was 'vicious nonsense' and she clearly supports abortion rights, saying An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).
Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?
That occurred to me a few months ago.
-cosigned
A family friend was raped earlier this year when she went on a date with a guy from match.com, and when my mom told me about it, she said that the police told her that it was good she had bruises and injuries, because then people would believe it and a conviction was more likely. So that's where we are as a society -- grateful for physical injury, otherwise that rapist will walk. Disgusting. Really sick of living in a world that hates women.
This is not how it should be.
It is, I have to admit, easier to prove that whatever happened was not consensual if there are physical injuries. Unless it was caught on tape, witnessed, etc. threats and other sorts of coercion don't leave evidence that can be entered into a court register. I'm not sure how to get around that.
What needs to stop right. fecking. now. is the assumption that rape victims are lying, and in particular the framing of underage girls as 'Lolitas' who seduced those poor, bewildered 50 year old men.
http://www.indecisionforever.com/blog/2
It befuddles me that Paul Ryan can essentially put the same sentiment in a house bill along with Akin and no one is bothered by that. SO MUCH blatent hypocrisy right now.
Sounds creepy and rapey to me. Maybe he said that because he not only believes it but has done it before? I wouldn't be surprised, because no decent person in their right mind would say something like that.
THIS
there are days
when there is no way
not even a chance
that I dare for even a second glance at the reflection of my body in the mirror and she knows why
like I know why she only cries when she feels she's about to loose control
she knows how much control is worth
knows how much a woman can loose when her power to move
is take away
by a grip so thick with hate it could
clip the wings of god
send the next eight generations of your blood shaking
and tonight something inside me is breaking
my heart beating so deep beneath the sheets of pain
I could give every tear she's crying a name
a year
and a face I'd forever erase if I could just like she would
for you
or me
but how free would any of us be if even a few forgot what too many women in this world cannot
and what the hell would you tell your daughter?
your someday-daughter when you have to hold her beautiful face to the beat-up face of this place that hasn't learned the meaning of STOP
stop
what would you tell you daughter
of the womb raped empty?
the eyes swollen shut, the gut too frightened to hold food, it was seven minutes of the worst kind of hell
seven
and she stopped believing in heaven
mistrust became her law, fear her bible, the only chance of survival
don't trust any of them
bolt the doors to your home, iron-gate the windows, walking to the car alone, get the key in the lock like
please
please, please, please open
like already she can feel the five-fingered noose around her neck, two-hundred pounds of hate digging graves into the sacred soil of her flesh
please
please, please, please, please open
already she can hear the broken-record of the defense:
"answer the question, answer the question, answer the question miss"
why am I on trial for this?
would you talk to your mother, your daughter, your sister like this?
I am generations of mothers, daughters, sisters
bodies battlefields, war zones beneath the weapons of your brothers' hands
do you know they've found land mines in broken women's souls?
black holes in the parts of their hearts that once sang symphonies of creation as bright as the light on infinity's halo?
she said, I remember how love used to glow like glitter on my skin before he made his way in, now every touch feels like a sin that could crucify medusa
kali oshun mary, bury me in a blue blanket so god doesn't know I'm a girl, cut off my curls, I want peace when I'm dead
her friend knocks at the door, it's been three weeks, don't you think it's time you got out of bed? no.
the ceiling fan still feeling like his breath, I think I need just a few more days of rest
bruises on her knees from begging to forget
she's heard stories of vietnam vets who can still feel the tingling of their amputated limbs
she's wondering how many women are walking around this world still feeling the tingling of their amputated wings, remembering what it was to fly, to sing
tonight
she's not wondering what she would tell her daughter
she knows what she would tell her daughter, she'd ask her what gods do you believe in?
I'll build you temple of mirrors so you can see them
pick the brightest star you ever wished on and I'll show the light in you that made that wish come true
tonight
she's not asking what you would tell your daughter, she's life deep in the hell
the slaughter
has already died a thousand deaths with every unsteady breath
a thousand graves ib every pore of her flesh
and she
knows the war's not over, she knows there's bleeding to come
knows she's far from the only woman or girl trusting this world no more than the hands trust rusted barbed wire
she was whole before that night, believed in heaven before that night
and she knows she won't be the only one, no she knows she won't be the only one
she's not asking
what you're gonna tell your daughter, she's asking what
you're gonna teach
you're son.
- Andrea Gibson // Blue Blanket
And what the fuck is "forcible" rape? I hate how people have so many different ways to tear a rape victim down and make it all out to be her fault. It's why I never reported it when I was raped---what was the point when it would somehow be twisted to be my fault?
The only possibly positive thing I can see coming out of this is this forcing people to open their eyes to the ignorant douchebaggery of conservatives, leading to them losing in the election in November.