Our media-saturated culture conditions boys and men to dehumanize and disrespect women in magazines, television, and film and in everyday life. The message is clear. Womanizing is about power and privilege, a sense of entitlement. And in religion and politics, we see the same culture of misogyny. The latest comes from Missouri Republican Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin. Akin, who opposes abortion in all cases, including rape, said, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Mr. Aiken, oddly enough, is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, yet he uses non-scientific reasoning to perpetrate one of the most offensive and ignorant campaign season’s comments yet. To wit a study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology that states, “an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year,” in the United States, meaning that about 5 percent of women who are raped do become pregnant. And of that 5 percent, 50% choose to abort the pregnancy. Imagine—Science defying the logic of the GOP.
Beyond what Akin said is the logic that informed his gaffe. If you get pregnant, it wasn’t rape. That’s it. If you are violently and sexually penetrated by a rapist’s penis, against your will, and you are impregnated, then it wasn’t rape. But even beyond that logic is his unquestionable stance against abortions for any reason; hence, he believes if you get pregnant, you should carry the pregnancy to term.
This faux science is not new. In fact, his canard has been floating around the anti abortion Republicans for some time. Let’s go back to 1998 and a statement from Fay Boozman, the late Fay Boozman of Arkansas. He was running for U.S. Senate, and he said fear-induced hormonal changes could block a rape victim’s ability to conceive. In 1995, North Carolina State Representative Henry Aldridge said, “The facts show that people who are raped, who are truly raped, the juices don’t flow, the body functions don’t work and they don’t get pregnant.” Then there’s a similar statement from 1988. Pennsylvania Republican State Representative Steven Friend said, “The odds of a woman becoming pregnant through rape are one in millions and millions and millions.” He said, “The trauma of rape causes women to secrete a certain secretion which has a tendency to kill sperm.” One has to notice the covert message that almost excuses the perpetrators and blames the victims of sexual violence.
I’m reminded of an incident at an Allentown PA abortion clinic where a mother and daughter were verbally accosted by a particularly aggressive protester. The mother told the man that her daughter was raped. And rather than back off or show some modicum of compassion, he screamed,“If the child was conceived in rape that’s the way God wanted it.” [see video]. Essentially, disregard the violence. Disregard her pain. Disregard her humanity. Fr. Frank Pavone said essentially the same thing in an interview years back. He claimed (and still does) the mother was harmed once. Abortion would harm her again and kill her unborn. Again, no regard for the violence, no regard for the woman, no regard for what the woman wants.
The fact remains that Todd Akin will never know what it means to be a woman, to be trapped in a bed, shoved down on a parking garage staircase, or tied to pole in an abandoned basement. He’ll never know what it’s like to be violently assaulted by some aggressive, indifferent friend or stranger or relative. He’ll not know what it feels like having someone gag you, rip off your clothes and enter your most personal, sacred, private part of your body and do so violently, hatefully forcing himself into you, ripping you apart, filling you with unwanted sperm, and knowing you cannot escape the thing growing inside of you. Todd Aiken will never experience being a woman who is pregnant from a rapist and being told you have no choice. Yet, I’m betting, he’s pretty self-righteous when he says women should have no choice.
Like the majority of the GOP, including the Vice President hopeful Paul Ryan, Todd Akin’s message is clear: No abortion for you! Your body is to support the rapist’s fetus against your will. And when you see the face of the rapist in that child, you will be judged harshly if you cannot love that face.
My sense is that this debacle is further evidence of what is known as the GOP’s war on women. But right-wing media figures have downplayed and dismissed Republican Congressman Todd Akin’s controversial remarks on rape and abortion, calling them “dumb” and a distraction. The public response to Akin’s comments more or less drove him to offer a feigned apology. I say feigned because it now it appears that, all the while, the people really in charge of the GOP—fundamentalist anti-choicers among them—have been writing a party platform that not only makes all of that a lie, but is in effect a promise to make the personhood of fertilized eggs the law of the land.
The draft official platform strongly supports a “a human life amendment” to the Constitution:
Faithful to the ‘self-evident’ truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed, the draft platform declares. “We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”
Let’s be very, very clear that such an amendment—which Mitt Romney has said unequivocally he would sign—would not only criminalize abortions of any kind for any reason, but also would outlaw many forms of contraception, in-vitro fertilization, and treatment of pregnant women with life-threatening conditions such as cancer. Moreover, it would also criminalize miscarriage.
So, there you have some of the facts. The problem isn’t Akin.
It’s the central position of the GOP controlled by fundamentalists who believe women have no rights. Which side of history will you be on?
August 22, 2012 at 8:14 pm
Todd Aiken is a pawn in the GOP
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August 23, 2012 at 12:55 pm
Speaking of the GOP,
Did anyone see this screwball?
http://news.yahoo.com/video/szabo-abortion-act-needs-stopped-192106451.html
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August 23, 2012 at 12:57 pm
When will the Christian Taliban realize there is no room for them in this country?
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August 24, 2012 at 1:08 pm
Never, is my guess.
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August 23, 2012 at 6:15 am
This is the second hysterical anti-Aiken diatribe I’ve read in the last five minutes, Ann Coulter’s being the first.
That women’s bodies react to rape in such a way that conception is unlikely is something I heard forty years ago. My wife calls it an urban legend, but who knows. At this point killers’ helpers say it’s a blasphemous lie and most prolifers look the other way. Let’s wait for the study.
And here’s something else to think about — maybe our low birth rate is not all due to “contraception.” Maybe the female body these days reacts against what often passes for “love-making” but is more akin to rape. What’s your take on that, Rog?
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August 23, 2012 at 7:31 am
I should have said, Maybe the female body reacts against what these days often . . .
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August 23, 2012 at 12:52 pm
Even an illiterate would know that the studies are very clear on the chance of pregnancy and rape.
The pregnancy rate is typically a function of where the women is in her ovulatory cycle.
Whether she is raped or not raped the correlation coefficient is nearly 1.00.
Primate studies support this as well.
The confluence of data reveals that myths these conservatives believe is the same kind of magical belief systems that they draw upon for most of their opinions.
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August 23, 2012 at 1:39 pm
This doesn’t sound too scholarly to me, Evi, “confluence of data” indeed. I think I’ll wait before deciding whom to believe.
You really do love my word “illiterate,” don’t you. When I teach, they learn.
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August 23, 2012 at 5:47 pm
Only an illiterate would not understand how scientific data is distilled.
This has been proven over and over again with every discussion with every anti abortion maniac on this site.
Only a single (one, that’s is it!) Anti Abortion person (who did not appear to be a maniac) seemed to understand the basics of science and statistics.
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August 23, 2012 at 6:23 pm
Count me as an illiterate because I don’t know how scientific data is distilled. Does a better martini result?
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August 23, 2012 at 7:08 pm
It is obvious that you have no idea how one reviews scientific information.
Hence your magical beliefs. You appear too lazy to read the literature and comment based on magical beliefs from reading what you have written.
Continue to desecrate your body with alcohol if that is your choice.
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August 23, 2012 at 7:40 pm
” You appear too lazy to read the literature and comment based on magical beliefs from reading what you have written” means, You appear too lazy to read the literature. Your writing here is obviously based on magical beliefs.
Did I get it right, Ev? If so, it’s a start.
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August 24, 2012 at 1:09 pm
Were you desecrating your body with Alcohol?
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August 24, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Desecrating? With the elixir of the gods? Comon, Ev, you’re kidding, right?
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August 25, 2012 at 6:38 pm
What do you think about the Mormon belief system?
Are they as Nutty as the seem by their own writings?
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August 26, 2012 at 3:53 am
yeah
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August 26, 2012 at 7:01 pm
Yeah?
So they are as Nutty as they seem . . . are you going to vote for the nutty people in the election?
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August 27, 2012 at 5:39 am
I’d vote for a nut over a killers’ helper any time.
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August 23, 2012 at 2:05 pm
You must either choose new life or existing life….I say existing life trumps the little bugger
see article
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/08/22/“new-life”-trumps-“existing-life”-in-modern-republican-party
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August 23, 2012 at 6:25 pm
New life doesn’t exist?
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August 23, 2012 at 5:48 pm
Why are the anti abortion people so consistently on the stupid end of the intelligence scale?
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August 23, 2012 at 6:25 pm
Why are Seth and h is ilk so consistently on the stupid end of the intelligence scale?
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August 23, 2012 at 7:12 pm
They are not. But religious fanatics are.
Only illiterates simply repeat what is already written.
1) Why are so many priests Pedophiles?
2) Why do so many priests like to cover up Pedophile behavior of other priests?
3) Why did the Catholic Cult choose a Pope that was a Nazi, when there were so many other candidates that were not Nazis?
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August 23, 2012 at 7:44 pm
They are not, they are so, they are not, they are so . . .
Remember my telling you, Ev, that I can handle only one idea at a time? Which of those three do you want to start with?
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August 23, 2012 at 8:57 pm
Start with the first unanswered, then proceed to the next. Then iterate.
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August 24, 2012 at 4:47 am
OK, the first, “Why are so many priests pedophiles?”
They aren’t — fewer than ministers and far fewer than public school teachers, for example. (The reason their numbers are blown out of proportion is that you don’t find many anti-teachers around but anti-Catholics like yourself are legion)
However, the acceptance of homosexuality as another order rather than as a disorder accounts for those few. (Haven’t you noticed, Evi, that 90% of these cases are male adolescent on male adolescent?) And the acceptance of mutual masturbation (“contraception”) by just about everyone accounts for the acceptance of homosexuality (“if they can do it why can’t we?”)
It’s up to you now if you want to proceed to your next question. You might first want to rebut what I’ve said here. Just don’t start jumping all over the place as you used to.
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August 24, 2012 at 1:13 pm
You evaded answering:
2) Why do so many priests like to cover up Pedophile behavior of other priests?
3) Why did the Catholic Cult choose a Pope that was a Nazi, when there were so many other candidates that were not Nazis?
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August 24, 2012 at 3:41 pm
I guess this means that you’ve accepted my answer to your first question — why are so many priests pedophiles? But why not just say it instead of implying it? It’s so much more civilized in a discussion to say something like, “OK, Johnny Boy, that sounds reasonable. Now let’s move on the the second question.”
The second question was “Why do so many pedophile priests like to cover up pedophile behavior priests?” You have one mistaken and one accurate charge here. The mistaken one is to imply that many priests are pedophiles. Actually there are far fewer pedophile priests proportionately than there are pedophile teachers.
The accurate charge is the cover up. There are many reasons for this but I think the most telling is what happened to the American Church in the 50’s and 60’s. Most of our clergy then, cardinals on down, accepted the legitimacy of masturbation, solo and mutual (the Church herself never has and never will). Back then I asked my close priest friend what he said to married couples who told him in the confessional that they used “contraceptives.” He told me he would say, “Tell me something real.”
Once a priest says that a married person does not have be chaste how can he then say that a single person has to be? He can’t. He can’t even tell his buddies and himself to be chaste. And that, my boy, is the big reason for the cover up.
So again I ask you, should I go the next question or should we stick with this one for a while?
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August 25, 2012 at 6:40 pm
What is “The American Church?”
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August 26, 2012 at 3:48 am
That’s the Catholic Church in the USA.
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August 26, 2012 at 12:16 pm
Given This:
***************
Lambert (2003) has examined the religious affiliations and beliefs of the Founders. Of the 55 delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, 49 were Protestants, and two were Roman Catholics (D. Carroll, and Fitzsimons). Among the Protestant delegates to the Constitutional Convention, 28 were Church of England (or Episcopalian, after the American Revolutionary War was won), eight were Presbyterians, seven were Congregationalists, two were Lutherans, two were Dutch Reformed, and two were Methodists.
A few prominent Founding Fathers were anti-clerical Christians, such as Thomas Jefferson (who created the so-called “Jefferson Bible”) and Benjamin Franklin. Others (most notably Thomas Paine) were deists, or at least held beliefs very similar to those of deists.
Historian Gregg L. Frazer argues that the leading Founders (Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Wilson, Morris, Madison, Hamilton, and Washington) were neither Christians nor Deists, but rather supporters of a hybrid “theistic rationalism”.
***********
How do you support your claim that the Catholic Cult and the Mills where they indoctrinate more Catholics are “The Church of America?”
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August 26, 2012 at 4:28 pm
Oh geeze, Ev, get a grip. I don’t know where to start. Of course the Catholic Church is not America’s church. The anti-Catholic cult that you belong to has more claim to that title. I’m talking about the Catholic Church in America! In Europe that might be the Catholic Church in Finland, or in Spainj. Catholics are everywhere — that’s what “catholic”: means!
Now what were you saying?
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August 26, 2012 at 7:04 pm
Johnny Boy, Why don’t you try again.
You made no sense at all.
You can be more literate than that? Don’t you agree?
Give it another shot JB, so your answer doesn’t read so poorly.
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August 26, 2012 at 7:24 pm
OK Evi. Time for you to go away. You’re starting to annoy me.
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February 8, 2014 at 3:04 am
I really apiracpete free, succinct, reliable data like this.
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August 25, 2012 at 6:09 am
Perhaps in all their “bead counting & kneeling” they forgot to learn how to read intelligent writer’s and actually listen to what intelligent people have to say!! (instead of just following the RNC party line!!)
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August 25, 2012 at 2:00 pm
What’s RNC, LDM.
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August 26, 2012 at 9:15 pm
i think far too many people follow party agendas instead of a combination of common sense and their own hearts.
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August 27, 2012 at 4:50 am
Careful here, Rog: “common sense and their own hearts.” You know where those led you.
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August 24, 2012 at 4:02 pm
John, Evan,
Why not take your quibbles over to John’s blog since you don’t want to respond to the web site.
http://skyp1.blogspot.com
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August 24, 2012 at 4:28 pm
fine with me
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August 25, 2012 at 5:26 am
Guess it ain’t fine with Ev. That site is kind of a mess though. Why not we just move over to my special site here, Ev, jjdunkle, I think the name of it is.
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August 25, 2012 at 5:28 am
No, it’s Dunkle.com
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August 25, 2012 at 6:43 pm
Thanks – but no thanks! That site is scary!
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August 25, 2012 at 1:02 pm
why should they have to leave? i have always enjoyed his squabbles either, illiterate, non-sensical, or just plain funny, i have objections to that, it makes no sense to write about these things and not let them talk it out. The world sorts things out, hence a sense in mediation: Dunkle, Evan, listen, the catholic church probably had nazi party members and pedophiles, but look at your neighborhoods, they live their too, denigrating another persons culture should not have a stance in this debate, it does not matter, i have to say there are bigger problems here…
this pseudo science is just like the mass in self denigration, believing that evolution is not a credible theory and intelligent design has anything to say, or anything to back it. but listen its okay, just dont rant. keep it simple, to the point, and consistent with the subject of the post, to be honest though, i think the congruent line of separation among church and state is well, non existent. In the likes of ill guided lines of knowledge, that is.
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August 25, 2012 at 4:25 pm
No one said they HAD to leave. It was merely a glib suggestion.
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August 25, 2012 at 5:03 pm
And Smitty, Ev ain’t nonsensical all the time! Give him a break.
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August 26, 2012 at 9:13 pm
i don’t see what akin said as being a matter of pro-choice vs anti-choice regardless of the query posed to him.
i am an anti and i know he’s FOS.
what he did was diminish the horror of the brutality of rape by saying that if a woman is pregnant, she wasn’t raped. that she was actually saying yes to the attacker.
it scares the absolute motherflip out of me that someone that stupid could be in a position of power.
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August 27, 2012 at 7:50 am
Rog siding with killers again and diminishing the horror of the brutality of torturing children to death. What else is new.
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August 26, 2012 at 9:20 pm
btw, the photos for this entry are amazing!
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August 30, 2012 at 3:11 pm
Thanks.
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August 27, 2012 at 3:52 pm
<<>> Yes, and that is because women are not actually earthlings. They have come to this planet from a distant galaxy. Women have extraordiany power to rule the earth.
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February 8, 2014 at 1:19 am
ஜ ர ம ப ந ள உங கள க க ண ம . ந ங க அர ள க க spokes proesn இல ல ய .ந ங கள ம சர அர ள ப ற றவர கள ம சர ப த ப பட ய வ க ற றச ச ட ட வ த த க ண ட இர க க ற ர கள . ஒர ந ரட ய க ள வ உங கள சம கத த ந க க அல ல மல உங கள ந க க ந ய யம க வ த த ல க ண மல ப ய வ ட க ற ர கள . அல லத அத தவ ர த த ஏத த ச ல ல க க ண ட இர க க ற ர கள .இத ல இர ந த உங கள ந க கம த ள வ க வ ளங க க றத .சம கம ச ர ந த ப த பட ய ன ஒத த க க ள ளல மற த தல எத ய ம ந ன ச ய வத ல ல . அதன ல உங கள க ள வ க க என பத ல எனக க வன ம ற எந த ர பத த ல ம ஏற ப ட யதல ல. அந த வக ய ல இங க சம கம ச ர ந த ப த ப பட ய ன க ழ ப ணர ச ச க கர த த க கள ய ம ந ன வன ம ற ய கவ ப ர க க ற ன . இந த இந த த வ , ப ர ப பனர , த ர வ ட வ மர சனங கள வ ட த த ந ங கள தன மன தன க உங கள ப ற ப ப கள ல எத ய வத ந ங கள வ த ட ம மக கள க க க ச ய வத ன ல ஒன ற ய வத ச ல ல ங கள .
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