“That’s not so much outrageous as just so wildly ignorant that you wonder whether someone like that has any business on the local school board let alone in Congress. But even this turns out to be a commonly held belief within the pro-life movement.”
“Willke claims that he got a private meeting with Romney as recently as late last year and told Willke ‘we agree on almost everything’ about the pro-life cause.”
“Seventeenth-century forensic medicine is alive and well in Missouri. There must be a folk tradition that quietly perpetuates these views beneath the surface of science.”
“In supporting his claim about trauma and ovulation, Mecklenburg cited experiments conducted in Nazi death camps.”
“Todd Akin is not the most immoral Republican officeholder in the Missouri-Mississippi Valley. Bill Napoli is.”
“If you narrow the definition of rape to ‘forcible rape,’ and if you convince yourself that forcible rape doesn’t result in pregnancies, then you can have an antiabortion bill that satisfies the public’s desire for exceptions but doesn’t lead to any actual exceptions. It’s magical thinking, but it’s magical thinking with a purpose.”
“To the extent that rape and incest exceptions have been advocated, said [Ralph] Reed, ‘it’s been mostly for political viability and expediency.'”
“Add in the junk science element, and you reach the conclusion — not unusual among abortion opponents — that a pregnancy is prima facie evidence that the fetus wasn’t conceived during a rape, and thus that rape exceptions to abortion restrictions are superfluous.”
“Personally, I am grateful that Akin brought the snakes out of their pit so that we can see clearly who they are and what their game is.”
“You know, he clearly is a pro-life advocate, and for that, I respect him.”
“The swift knee-jerk reaction to throw Akin, a strong conservative pro-life, pro-family born again Christian under the bus by some in the Republican Party is shining the light on their actual agenda.”
“Akin is only guilty of saying out loud what many Republican leaders think and legislate on the basis of.”
“Many people responded with shock, but there was no outcry from Republicans that Santorum drop out of the race.”
“‘You sponsored legislation that has the language forcible rape,’ Delano pointed out to Ryan. ‘What is forcible rape?'”
“It keeps popping up because this is actually the position of the party.”
“The party itself, in its platform, its votes, its policies, embraces the very things that Akin said and attested to believing.”
“Today’s Republican Party is about as useful to women as a jockstrap.”
“Missouri Republicans — the folks who never have had a problem putting this guy in Congress and obviously had no problem with him as a senator — have to choose between common decency and political tribalism.”
“The fundamentalist evangelicalism in which I grew up doesn’t treat rape as a separate category. Instead, rape is grouped under either ‘premarital sex’ or ‘marital sex.’”
“Sing along as Taylor Ferrera runs down the list of illegitimate rapes …”
NOTE: The following are several moving, brutally honest personal accounts of traumatic horrors that some readers may want or need to skip.
But not Todd Akin, or Paul Ryan, or any of their enablers. Those guys have to read these. They’re not allowed to turn away. They need to read these.
Susie Madrak: “The Secret World of Rape; Or, I Enjoy Being a Girl”
Eve Ensler: “Dear Mr. Akin, I Want You to Imagine …”
Shauna Prewitt: “An Open Letter to Rep. Akin From a Woman Who Got Pregnant From Rape”
Anonymous: “A Rape Survivor’s Story“
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