That just became a whole lot harder, thanks to Akin's asinine comment when asked whether he would still oppose abortion in rape cases. His response was:
"From what I understand from doctors, that's really rare," Akin said of pregnancy resulting from rape. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume maybe that didn't work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist."
But Akin is by far not the first Republican to make some idiotic/incredibly offensive remark about rape. How about these zingers:
North Carolina state lawmaker Henry Aldridge: "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 pregnant. Medical authorities agree that this is a rarity, if ever."
Federal Judge James Leon Holmes (appointed by G.W. Bush): "Concern for rape victims is a red herring because conceptions from rape occur with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami."
Pennsylvania Republican Steven Freind insisted that women who are being raped "secrete a certain secretion" that kills the sperm of a rapist.
Clayton Williams, former GOP nominee for governor of Texas on the subject of rape: "It's like the weather. If it's inevitable, relax and enjoy it."
One has to ask -- are these Republicans really that ignorant? Did their parents make them skip health class? Or is this a case of a few morons whose anti-abortion views are so extreme that they can't fathom that a woman could get pregnant after being raped? And what does Clayton Williams not understand about the terrifying, invasive crime that is rape that he thinks women should "relax and enjoy it"??
Rep. Akin's comments about rape and conception are a very inconvenient truth for Rep. Paul Ryan, the newly-minted GOP veep nominee. Mitt Romney's campaign came out with a statement saying a Romney/Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in the case of rape (although I believe Romney said otherwise before -- oops, yet another flip-flop). This counters what Ryan believes, and that is that abortion should only be allowed in cases where the mother's life is in danger. He is in favor of a "personhood" amendment, which would make a fertilized egg a "person" in the eyes of the law. Rep. Ryan is all into facts and figures, since he loves budgeting so much, so in this case I will share with him the formula for making a baby, since he doesn't really seem to understand the process:
Egg from mother +
1 lucky-ass sperm from father +
implantation into womb of said Mother +
many weeks of gestation =
BABY
Now, if you only have the first two ingredients, guess what - there's no baby! You can put a sperm and an egg together in a petri dish and leave them there for nine months or nine years, and you still ain't gonna get no baby! If there's no implantation in the womb, there's no baby! Period. Sheesh, I wish they would learn that simple fact.
But then, with comments like the ones above, I despair of them ever having the intelligence to figure it out.
