Legitimate Rape

[filkertom]

Jeez, get off the internet for a couple of days, and you miss all kinds of WUT I DON'T EVEN:Rep. Todd Akin, a tea party candidate who is challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in the closely watched race, was asked in a local television interview about whether he supports access to abortion in the case of rape

Comments

[starmalachite]

This is SOP among a certain right-wing type. For the last few years, they've been busily spreading the lie that "if it's really rape, the woman can't get pregnant, so exceptions for rape just let women lie their way into an abortion." That is from memory, but pretty much verbatim from a whole bunch of these mofos.

Thank goddess they broke cover & let their true colors show *before* the election.

[nancylebov]

I'd heard that theory at least 10 years ago. Maybe 15 years.

[realinterrobang]

This is the expected and desired outcome of abstinence-only "sex education."

[starmalachite]

I'd heard that theory at least 10 years ago. Maybe 15 years.

Ditto, but it was out at the fringes. Now they're actively trying to move it into the mainstream. Note that a House candidate had no problem saying it with videotape rolling; apparently he was convinced that, at least among Republicans, this was an article of faith.

[nagaina_ryuuoh]

This bullshit has been around since at least the thirteenth century, if not longer. It's an outgrowth of the idea that women are sexually insatiable and cannot conceive without orgasm -- and if an orgasm occurred, she obviously wanted the sex, amirite?

[pocketnaomi]

Unfortunately, this one showed his true colors just a couple of days too early. I'm really hoping he stands stubborn and doesn't withdraw from the race the way his party is asking him to. They don't give a damn about what he said; what they care about is that Akin is so unelectable that the McKaskill campaign deliberately ran ads to prop him up during the primary campaign, because he's the only one of the possible Republicans she's likely to beat. I want him to stay in the race, dammit. Especially after this. Anyone else they get will doubtless have the same views, they'll just be smarter about saying them and we'll lose a Senate seat.

[dan_ad_nauseam]

The first poll released after this incident shows McCaskill within a point of Akin.

[dan_ad_nauseam]

And the next one puts her up 10 points. That's a 21 point swing in a week.