So Todd Akin, a six-term Congressman running for the Senate in Missouri, defended his belief that abortion should not be allowed for rape. He told the TV interviewer that pregnancy from rape is very rare and went on to cite a bit of lore that the very trauma of rape makes pregnancy less likely, saying in a “legitimate rape” “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
This comment has produced a huge amount of outrage. He is saying there can be a “legitimate rape”! Rape is a means of birth control! Rape isn’t so bad!
Now he didn’t mean any of that, and he hastened to explain, to take back his clumsy comment, to apologize for seeming insensitive. He was probably completely wrong about the effect of trauma upon conception, but that would surely be a mistake of fact, rather than a pro-rape, anti-woman conviction.
But the statement played into the media narrative of the Republican “war on women.” Then the Democrats pounced. Jumping from what Rep. Akins said to what all Republicans supposedly believe, Democrats have been saying that Republicans are anti-woman.
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