Of rape and pregnancy
Republican Todd Akin is not alone in his ignorance.
That some Americans are ignorant about women’s reproductive systems and the horror of rape is no surprise. Alas, Republican standard-bearers are among their ranks.
August 21, 2012 - 12:26 AM
Who voted for Akin? In the interest of full disclosure, Akin won a six-candidate primary. Many democrats, including the incumbent Senator Claire McCaskill, voted for Akin in the GOP primary. They thought he would be the easiest GOP candidate to beat in November. Perhaps they were right.
A quick followup on the editorial. Anyone who thinks this is not a systemic problem for the Republican Party, think again. Turns out the draft GOP platform being written for approval at the party convention next week includes strident anti-choice language and no exemption for rape or incest.
Isn’t that kind of like saying the Dem platform includes anti-life language?
Word I’ve heard is that state Repubs will be bringing back the lamebrain personhood bill this next GA session after the election is safely over. Along with a slew of other bills they thought would be too controversial to pursue this past year.
#2 You’re right, Christian. Here are some other examples, borrowed from an editorial at CNN:
“Last March, in a discussion in the Kansas House about whether women purchase separate abortion-only policies, Republican state Rep. Pete DeGraaf suggested women should plan ahead for rape the way he keeps a spare tire. A few weeks later, Indiana state Rep. Eric Turner, a Republican, said some women might fake being raped in order to get free abortions.
“Former presidential hopeful Rick Santorum suggested doctors who perform an abortion on a woman who becomes pregnant from an attack should be thrown in jail and this year suggested rape victims who become pregnant from an attack should be forced to keep the baby and “make the best out of a bad situation.”
#3 Really, 89Hoo? You mean like, “The Democratic Party heartily endorses abortions and urges the country to adopt legislation forcing every woman to consider getting one”?
Can’t say as I’ve seen that language. Can you point it out?
And just to remind everyone, Virginia’s own Gov. Bob McDonnell is chairman of the GOP platform committee. The Washington Post has his take on how the platform deals with abortion.
Rep. Todd Akin…the latest “shiny object” to distract from our nation’s abysmal economy and Obama’s record of failure.
6 – it’s not that complicated gdad…if pro-life = anti-choice, then pro-choice = anti-life.
The opposite of “pro choice” isn’t “pro life”. The opposite of “pro choice” is “governmental control over women’s bodies”. They just think “pro life” sounds nicer, but it’s not accurate.
10, so if a woman chooses to kill her baby, she’s exercising choice. If she chooses not to, she’s under the control of the government? Interesting.
#9 Well, 89Hoo, I just figured that if the Repub Party position is to deny any women access to abortion for any reason whatsoever (heck, a fair number of Repubs want to outlaw certain types of birth control and IVF), you must mean that the Democratic Party is pushing legislation requiring abortions.
89Hoo, choice consists of a variety of options of which abortion is just one. Believe it or not, if she has the baby and keeps is, she’s ALSO exercising “choice”. If she has a baby and gives it up for adoption, she’s also exercising “choice”. The term “choice” implies a variety of outcomes FREELY CHOSEN by the citizen in question.
The right just chooses to fixate on that over which they want to have control, but it’s about being “pro” wielding power.
Actually #12, Obamacare mandates that all insurance policies provide abortions for all women, for any reason, at no cost to the woman. They don’t permit employers to exercise their free choice not to provide abortions which may conflict with their religious and moral values. So much for being pro-choice. In fact the democratic platform is pro-abortion.
Libs believe in pro choice as long as the choice is abortion.
Witness how they resist requiring any patient information about the stage of development of the fetus or available alternatives to abortion much less requiring parental consent for minors.
13 – yes, Kristen, choice also includes adoption and having and raising the child, either/both of which pro-life folks advocate. By labeling pro-life folks as anti-choice (as Christian did), he (and you) eliminate those very valid options, implying that the only option pro-choice folks care about is killing the child…that’s anti-life (or pro-death if you want to be blunt).
#15 I’m sure John R has some good links to examples of me resisting those things.
How is removing a choice, with a law, no less, not “anti-choice”?
Actually 89Hoo,those who self-identify as “pro life” are explicitly calling anyone who doesn’t agree with them “pro death”. They would more accurately call themselves “anti choice”…or maybe “anti choices we don’t agree with”. Or, even more accurately “Anti letting women make their own decisions about their bodies.”
While we’re on the topic, I’d love someone to tell me when pregnant women became the sole population deemed incapable of making decisions regarding their bodies? Because we all know it’s got nothing to do with the “sanctity of life” or whatever claptrap that group throws around. Anyone genuinely concerned about the fetal population of this country would be busy advocating for policies that would help bring down our third world infant mortality rate. Policies like better and more available health care counseling before pregnancy, access to widely available, free, and good quality health care and nutrition during pregnancy…things like that.
I know, I laughed too.
18 – 1) because there are still other choices; and 2) it is exclusive in that it does not consider the choice the soon-to-be-killed baby might make.
19 – how about “anti-abortion” and “pro-abortion”?
How about “anti abortion” and “pro birth”? Because, as I pointed out, giving birth is one of those “choices” available to women, and people who are “pro choice” would advocate for women to be able to avail themselves of the full range of choices. Which makes “pro birth” just as legitimate as “pro abortion”.
89Hoo, do you have any insight as to why the interest of the self-identified “pro lifers” begins and ends with women’s reproductive choices and doesn’t address the health of both women and children, before or after birth, in any remote way?
Eliminating choices makes you anti-choice unless it is a choice you agree with. There is no other way to look at it.
How does a free market ideal become so willing to put all sorts of legal constraints on pregnant women, how does that square? What is more private and less of any government’s business?
21 – Kristen, I can point you to many terrific pro-life organizations that DO focus on the health of the women and children. Crisis Pregnancy Centers throughout the country provide counseling, medical services, job placement and economic assistance, legal and logistical (for lack of a better term) help if the mother is in an abusive relationship, baby supplies, classes in infant care, adoption assistance if the mother chooses that route. All at no cost to the mother, entirely from philanthropic giving (which feeds well into another discussion we are having).
22 – Sandi, how does a bleeding heart ideal put so little value on the health of the baby (which is pretty much destroyed by an abortion), the health of the mother (abortions take a terrible toll on women, physically and emotionally)?
Au contraire, mon frère, the “bleeding heart ideal” puts great “value on the health of the baby”. We fully support funding for any woman who chooses life to stay at home with her child and get the taxpayer funded assistance to do so. We fully support comprehensive sex education and widely available and free birth control medications and prophylactics. We do not ask nor encourage any mother to give up her child. We fully support mental health services being widely available and free to anyone in need for as long as they need them.
The sin or tragedy (depending on the judgmental attitude being exercised) of abortion is not laid at the feet of the “bleeding heart ideal”. Not at all.
25 – there’s just that whole, inconveniently dead baby at the end…like I’ve said in the past: an abortion is the only medical procedure that has failed if no one dies.
Private groups maybe so, 89Hoo. The fact is, if the politicians who shill this issue and throw it like red meat to their constituents did the right thing, these private groups wouldn’t have to. Doesn’t it make sense that public policy that supposedly puts enough “value” on fetal health that it deems dictating a course of action to women should follow through on the other end by facilitating the execution of that policy? By some of the means I listed above. Not private groups. Public policy.
As for the terrible physical and emotional toll that abortion takes on women, that’s mostly nonsense and in any case not nearly the physical and emotional toll of childbirth, much less parenthood. Look into the maternal mortality rate in this country. Like every. single. other. aspect. of healthcare here, it’s Third World.
And men preaching about the “emotional” toll of women’s reproductive options is incredibly paternalistic and sanctimonious. You’d think men would be smart enough to hold their tongues and be grateful that they’ll never be put in a position to have to make those decisions.
But it’s not about “fetal health”, and it’s not about sparing women emotional upheaval. And we know that.
“Obamacare mandates that all insurance policies provide abortions for all women”
Link, please.
Fighting against many of the things that lessen “that whole, inconveniently dead baby at the end” is not pro-life. It is pro-judgment. It is pro-force. It is pro-right wing agenda, but it is not pro-life. You are trying to claim high ground that is not available to anyone who has not supported doing much more than we have been doing. I have and will continue to do so.
You know, the issue of women’s health care and abortion would be a lot simpler if Jesus had been aborted.
27 – Private groups maybe
Huh? Weren’t we talking about private groups, i.e., charities? Is there such a thing as a public charity (unless you mean Uncle Sam, in the form of welfare)?
Or do you think that CPCs cater only to a private, select clientele? If that’s what you think, you really need to educate yourself.
29 – no, I’m fighting for life for the unborn, and any amount of twisted justification on the left to ease a tormented conscience doesn’t change that fact. When weighed against the loss of innocent life, nothing else matters.
30 – not really. Mosaic law was a lot tougher than the new covenant that Christ made.
As to various state attempts to restrict carte blanche abortion (“choice”), in the face of Roe v Wade, and in the face of ACA requirements, irrespective of religious conviction & practice, the reciprocal argument is various exceptions, rape, incest, term length, etc.
Whether one agrees with the carte blanche choice, or the various restrictions, such laws have been passing Constitutional muster. Inevitably the exceptions become focal.
Claiming rape is a very large, subjectively defined and emotionally charged issue.
Even being pro-life generally, I would personally tend to respect the claim. Yet, within the context of a law that indeed recognizes such exception, the potential for mis-use is obvious.
Akin has every right to express such concerns, reference the construction & application of such laws and public policy. The voters of Missouri have every right to decide whether or not they concur.
As to “legitimate” rape, this is undoubtedly what he meant. As to the incipience of pregnancy during rape as compared to consensual intercourse, I don’t know. Do you? (But in my opinion beside the point, and where Akin made his mistake).
Romney is on record as supporting abortion in the case of rape.
It all comes down to when one’s faith tells them life begins.
If one’s faith tells them life begins at conception, then why punish an innocent baby who had nothing to do with the circumstances of the sex act?
If one has no conviction about when life begins, then an abortion is OK from day one till the day before normal delivery. This seems to be Obama’s position as he does not oppose late term abortion.
The point of contention here is that Akin’s opinions on abortion are extreme.
Extreme?
Obama supports partial birth abortion.
Obama opposes the Born Alive Infants Protection Act
Obama supports a carte blanche, abortion on demand, interpretation of Roe v Wade.
From his bully pulpit, and the politiclization of his DOJ, this has been his agenda. If re-elected he will appoint at least two SCOTUS Justices.
Extreme?
#33 “If one has no conviction about when life begins…”
I wouldn’t exactly call it “no conviction about when life begins”, John R, so much as a conviction that a woman’s decision over whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term is her decision — and her decision alone — to make and none of anyone else’s business (yours least of all, John R).
JohnR, science can’t adequately answer that question. Why would you be able to? You have what everyone else has…an opinion on the subject, no more or less valuable than anyone else’s.
Keep defending Akin, JimLucas. He’s going to be a millstone wrapped around the neck of the GOP as long as they continue the conversation.
Obama supports the law as it exists. Why would the POTUS do anything different? It’s the job of the DOJ to support existing law.
I have to laugh at the people who “know” what Obama meant in his remarks trying to explain what Akin meant in his! Too funny, really!
I am sorry, but the slippery slope that is the abortion issue has been done and done again. I do not grant that anyone who wants to limit public policy (and yes, that means the government being involved!) over supporting women so they can feel able to “choose life” is truly fighting for life for the unborn. It is not me or people who think like me that is using “twisted justification” either.
If it is not society who is to support the choice of a woman, then it is not society who has a say. It is really that simple.
It is the Christian, Muslim and Jewish edict to “ease a tormented conscience” with forgiveness and redemption. And your feelings on the choice a woman makes is your problem.
The vast majority of women in particular and educated people in general, support the right to an abortion for a woman. It is the “law of the land” with only restrictions on the viable life to be considered.
I refuse to accept that “nothing else matters”. But I do tend to take the “Go, and sin no more”, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” and the forgiveness of a loving God as my mantra.
Until the “right to life” folks support women in every way (and claiming the “dignity” of work at all costs, is not it!), I refuse them respect for their judgmental pronouncements and ignore the opinion on my “twisted justification”.
#36 “Keep defending Akin, JimLucas. He’s going to be a millstone wrapped around the neck of the GOP as long as they continue the conversation.
Obama supports the law as it exists. Why would the POTUS do anything different? It’s the job of the DOJ to support existing law.”
I’ve supported no one here. As to the GOP vis-a-vis the voters of Missouri, the latter will decide.
As to your words above, can you possibly be serious?
Work for wellfare waivers
Immigration enforcement
Congessional subpoenas
White House leaks subpoenas
DOMA
BATFE selective enforcement
Federal funds for abortion…..
….how much time ya’got?
“I’ve supported no one here.”
Your defense of Todd Akin has been stellar. Do you support the Republican party platform against abortion even in the case of rape, incest or to save the mother’s life? A simple yes or no will suffice.
“He’s going to be a millstone wrapped around the neck of the GOP as long as they continue the conversation.”
CORRECTION: He’s going to be a millstone wrapped around the neck of the GOP as long as Democrats and the MSM(D) can continue to hang it around their neck. And they will keep it up as long as possible. They’ll get as much mileage out of this as they possibly can, until the next “shiny object” comes along to distract from Obama’s miserable, failed economy.
Most in the GOP have disavowed Akin’s comments and asked him to drop out of the race. He refuses to do so. So, as Jim says, the voters of Missouri will decide.
But what you cannot disavow is that Ryan was a co-sponsor on the “personhood” bill with Akin. What you cannot disavow is that there is no exception for rape or incest in the TP/GOP Platform. What you cannot disavow is that neither Romney nor Ryan was influential enough to get Akin to leave the race. Romney and Ryan are just as extreme as Akin, they are just better at not saying such stupid things to back up their beliefs.
I don’t necessarily support the GOP’s “no exception” platform. However, I also don’t support the Dems position of abortion anytime, for any reason. My opinion falls in the middle…though I do admit, much closer to the GOP.
With that being said, this election is about a hell of a lot more than abortion, gay rights or the Dems social issue of the week. The economy is THE issue this time. And on that issue, Obama is a miserable failure.
41 – What the hell do you expect Romney/Ryan to do? Hire a hit man to take him out???
Yeah, keep trying to hang it on them. I think (hope) the general public and independent voters know better.
My opinions on abortion closer mirror OR’s in post 42. Abortion should be available to woman if the pregnancy is the result of rape, incest or if the mother’s life is in danger. Abortion as birth control is more problematic to me as it should be to everyone. Abortion in the third trimester is murder, plain and simple.
As a side note, I occasionally watch Al Sharpton on MSNBC’s Politics Nation for comic relief. It is interesting watching the “Reverend” extol the virtues of abortion rights.
Sorry, Other Rick , but Akin’s position is the official position of the Repub Party. Period. And I don’t know of a single Dem who believes that anybody should be able to get an abortion at ANY time for any reason. Can you show me where the Dem Party supports that? “Hey, doc, I know I’m in labor, but I’ve decided this baby is going to be inconvenient, so could we just abort it now?” I don;t think so.
Yes, the election is about more than abortion, but if you put Reubs in charge of everything, then you get the whole package, including the nutty stuff, like a personhood amendment. In addition, we haven’t heard a darned thing the Repubs will do to improve the economy, except maybe the economy of the super rich.
45….”we haven’t heard a darned thing the Repubs will do to improve the economy,”………..
Removing Obama and his team will be a gigantic step in the right direction.
Sure the election is always about more than abortion, women’s rights, gay rights, SSI/Medicare, foreign policy, or education, but where the candidates “stand” on these issues still matters to many voters and for many women, this one is a biggie.
The economy is indeed the big issue and I submit that the only people who think the economy will improve just because Obama et al is gone, just don’t know much about how our government works or how things happen in this nation.
Jumping out of the frying pan into the fire is not a cure, it is just the end.
#46, Jim, I think Dodgeball will be an Olympic event in 2016…you should try out.
48. e. william, there was no ball thrown to dodge in the first place.
45 – So Akin’s comment that a woman’s body can shut down and prevent pregnancy in the event of a rape…that is the “official position of the Repub Party”??? Wow. I must have missed that.
Let me see a link for that. Because THAT’S what this whole brouhaha is about. NOT his position on abortion in general.
45 – and yes, there are Dems and libs who don’t think there should be ANY restrictions on a woman’s right to an abortion – up to and including the third trimester. It may not be the official position…but it’s certainly supported by many in your party.
#39 No. As asked.
Do I agree with a broad philosophy oppossing abortion? Yes.
The GOP platform is just that. Exceptions are left out, not specifically denied. Exceptions can & will be carved from this general philosophy. Romney has done so & he is the nominee.
The opposite position would be abortion on demand, with no mention of exceptions, live birth, partial birth, length of term, etc. Pretty much the dem position. (But not all dems).
Mr. Hill, do you support abortion on demand with no exceptions? “A simple yes or no will suffice.”
@51 Name names.
I am 54 years old, been a liberal all my life and the ONLY person I have ever seen or heard articulate they did not think “there should be ANY restrictions on a woman’s right to an abortion – up to and including the third trimester”, was not a Liberal or a Democrat.
#52 No. As asked.
Do I agree with a broad philosophy of women’s right to choose? Yes.
Your claim that exceptions are simply “left out” and not “specifically denied” is balderdash. This radical view will cost the Republicans dearly in November.
Mr. Hill you are entitled to your opinion but you preach to the choir. Public opinion is consistently about even with a slight preference toward pro-life, depending on who’s asking & how asked.
It falls far down the list as to swaying voters, precisely because of the entrenched opinions on both sides.
This is why dems are trying to link Akin’s foot-in-mouth to the GOP platform. A platform consistent for 8 years, which does obviously allow for additional input. Including Romney’s. They cannot run on the debatable, pertinent, issues….or Obama’s record.
So you believe that Romney/Ryan is running on “debatable, pertinent, issues” or their own records? LOL
I agree and understand that people are not comfortable with simple “abortion on demand”, but of the three most egregious instances, people are overwhelmingly supportive of that right to choose.
http://www.pollingreport.com/abortion.htm
In a close election, there are many issues that can sway a voter, certainly social issues is one.
“Obama’s record.”
Mr. Lucas, Romney himself said today that “big business is fine.” If Republicans don’t believe their zero-abortion platform, invasive ultrasound and personhood legislation won’t alienate women voters in droves, they’re whistling past the graveyard.
58…Art, you are trying to catch a Blue Whale with a Barbie fishing pole. Obama has been a complete, utter disaster on every issue, not just one. I think we all know who is really “whistling past the graveyard.”
I guess the voters will decide who is whistling and who is ignoring the truth.
@59
JimW, tell us why Republicans are so busy airbrushing Bush/Cheney/Palin out of the picture? Their victory hangs on the short attention span of the American voter. Obama is not perfect, but he’s a damn site better than anything the GOP has to offer. If Romney manages to buy his way into the White House, Grandma WILL go over that cliff.
#61 – “Obama is not perfect, but he’s a damn site better than anything the GOP has to offer.”
You couldn’t be more wrong Art if you tried.