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GOP congressman and Senate nominee Todd Akin: Rape is an effective form of birth control

Not a doctor, but plays one on TV.

Our completely incorrect biology lesson today comes not from Chateau Heartiste or The Spearhead or EvoPsychBullshitBeliever997 on Reddit but from an actual elected official with influence in the real world:  Republican Congressman Todd Akin of Missouri, currently his party’s nominee for Senate.

In a recent interview with KTVI-TV, the Fox affiliate in St. Louis, he explained that the ladies just don’t get pregnant from rape — well, “legitimate rape” anyway. As he put it:

From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.

But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.

As The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake notes, this whole “rape as birth control” thing is not actually, you know, true:

Akin’s claim is one that pops up occasionally in social conservative circles. A federal judge nominated by President Bush in the early 2000s had said similar things, as have state lawmakers in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. …

According to a 1996 study, approximately 32,000 pregnancies result from rape annually in the United States, and about 5 percent of rape victims are impregnated.

Talking Points Memo notes that this isn’t the first time Akin has suggested that

some types of rape are more worthy of protections than others. As a state legislator, Akin voted in 1991 for an anti-marital-rape law, but only after questioning whether it might be misused “in a real messy divorce as a tool and a legal weapon to beat up on the husband,” according to … the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Akin: making up shit to deny rape victims their rights since 1991!

Currently, Akin has a big lead in the polls over his Democratic rival, sitting Sen. Claire McCaskill.

Here’s the relevant portion of Akin’s interview; you can find the whole thing at the Talking Points Memo link above.

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Amnesia
Amnesia
12 years ago

How does a man even know when he has obtained consent? What if she says yes and then later claims she said no? You do realize that any of you who are men could have such a thing happen to you, right? Just because you think of yourselves as feminists will not protect you from out-of-control “rape” laws.

Matthew 5:37- Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

Also, you do realize that if a woman wanted to falsely accuse a man of rape, sex wouldn’t even be a necessary component. She could just say that he did it. Technically, men are in danger of false accusations all the time. So why only worry about being falsely accused when sex is actually involved?
CONSTANT VIGILANCE, MEN!

ostara321
ostara321
12 years ago

I guess non-Christians can handle their relations however they want, but it makes no sense to have a marriage in which the partners cannot reasonably expect sexual expression to occur. That reduces them from husband and wife to room-mates.

Um, I’m pretty sure no one here expects people who are married to never have sex. What we do expect is for both partners to respect each other’s bodies and wishes about them.

People like Mary make me very much more firmly in the “nonbeliever” camp because, quite frankly, if your God thinks I have no right to give consent to things that happen to my own body, I want no part in worshiping that God.

Pam
Pam
12 years ago

Didn’t Paul have nasty things to say about women attempting to instruct men in matters of religion?

Yes, in some areas where he was spreading the gospel (eg., Ephesia, Corinth), but not all (eg., Rome).

Don’t you fundamentalists looooooove those verses because they back up your patriarchal ideals?

Yes, they do, whilst completely ignoring other verses where he referred to, as apostles and deacons, women (and men) who had worked with him.

blitzgal
12 years ago

Now the standard is “if she says it was rape, then it was rape.”

The arrest rate for reported rapes is 25%. 13% of those cases end up in a conviction. So, only 1 out of 4 accused rapists is even arrested in this country, and just over 1 in 10 of those people are ultimately convicted. Basically, the exact OPPOSITE of what you said is the case.

Sharculese
12 years ago

How does a man even know when he has obtained consent?

possibly by having a serious conversation of what consent is instead reflexively hand-wringing about how super duper hard it is to not rape people, duh.

it turns out it’s much easier to get things done when you think about them instead of childishly huff-puffing about the difficulty of words meaning things

Sharculese
12 years ago

Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, in his sermon entitled Disgrace and Grace, said that rape is “Any type of sexual behavior or contact where consent is not freely given or obtained and is accomplished through force, intimidation, violence, coercion, manipulation, threat, deception, or abuse of authority…And it manifests itself in three ways: “The ‘acts’ can be physical, verbal, or psychological.” In the age of bullying and the Internet, in the age of certain inappropriate speech and conduct, it just, it can be physical contact that connotes sexual assault, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. It also can be verbal and/or psychological.”

i know this usually rutee’s question but are you illiterate?

can you really not tell, in that definition, the difference between ‘non-consensual sexual behavior’ and saying thing?

pillowinhell
12 years ago

Sunshine mary, in past times ‘reasonable” people looked at women who cried rape and said “the slut had it coming” or “you’re married now, what goes on behind closed doors is no on elses business, quit airiing your dirty laundry”. It was a very, very rare woman who was believed and even then she usually had serious social sanctions (like being forced to marry her rapist) to deal with.

If you want to live you’re ife that allows any man at any time to rape you and you pay the consequences for that, fine. Just realize that many, many women will commit suicide or endanger their lives to not have to carry a rapists child.

And that’s what really gets me pissed. The fact that women will be put at risk for suicide or serious self harm over what amounts to a few cells.

Sharculese
12 years ago

If you want to live you’re ife that allows any man at any time to rape you and you pay the consequences for that, fine. Just realize that many, many women will commit suicide or endanger their lives to not have to carry a rapists child.

odds that sneerymary starts claiming people here called her husband a rapist: 100%

Seraph
Seraph
12 years ago

From previous encounters with her on this blog, I am of the opinion that she parrots what she has been told/taught about what the scriptures are saying, she hasn’t contemplated nor ruminated on the verses that she chooses to toss around in support of her arguments. When challenged on the meaning of various verses that she has tossed at us, she doesn’t respond directly to those challenges, she just runs off to the other “Christian” blogs that she frequents and wails about how we’re all a bunch of mean meanies.

A lot of fundamentalists run into this problem when they use verses that they either find extremely convincing themselves, or which they have been told are “magic bullets” that liberals can’t answer, and are met with actual arguments (or worse, dismissal – “Why should I care what the Bible says” doesn’t really compute with people who’ve built their whole lives on the Bible’s authority). Since their arguments are so self-evidently true, the only way you can be arguing against them is if you’re in willful, malicious denial.

Seraph
Seraph
12 years ago

Neither spouse has the right to refuse sexual relations unless the other agrees to abstain, too. For Christians, there can be no such thing as marital rape.

I guess non-Christians can handle their relations however they want,

Anybody else think this was an attempt to put us on the defensive? I imagine in Mary’s world (or at least in her mind) the other side would be forced to prove their Christian Credentials before they could continue arguing. She wasn’t ready for us to say “Exactly! Thanks for conceding our point!”

Pam
Pam
12 years ago

the only way you can be arguing against them is if you’re in willful, malicious denial.

OR, if female, you’re in rebellion against proper, God-given male authority over you. Perhaps that is why self-righteousmary doesn’t delve any deeper than what she has been told by the male authority over her, she doesn’t want to be disciplined, like a disobedient child, for her ‘rebellious nature’.

Pam
Pam
12 years ago

I guess non-Christians can handle their relations however they want,

I was LMAO reading this quoted sentence with the latter portion of it removed, as now I can easily imagine self-righteousmary finishing it off with “since they’re going to hell, anyway!”

Amused
12 years ago

If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.

Great. Now rape defendants in Missouri will start using the victim’s pregnancy as “evidence”
of consent.

bekabot
12 years ago

“My grandmother is very Christian (Episcopalian), and she would be horrified to be associated with most of the stuff Mary says.”

Episcopalians aren’t Christian, let alone “very Christian”, in Sunshine Mary’s book. Episcopalians are basically the American version of Anglicans, who are the next-worst thing to Catholics. When the roll is called up yonder, they’ll be frying away with all the other idolaters.

The SunshineMary variety of Evangelical Protestantism has done away with a lot of the traditional Protestant tropes (too much Boston, too much Massachusetts, too much communitarianism, too much conscience and too many no-fun Puritan fathers) but that’s one they’ve kept.

katz
12 years ago

Pastor Mark Driscoll seems eminently reasonable to me.

Dear God, no!

thebionicmommy
thebionicmommy
12 years ago

Episcopalians aren’t Christian, let alone “very Christian”, in Sunshine Mary’s book. Episcopalians are basically the American version of Anglicans, who are the next-worst thing to Catholics. When the roll is called up yonder, they’ll be frying away with all the other idolaters.

Exactly, the fundie church I went to as a kid taught us that liberal Christians are “lukewarm”, and that makes worse than nonbelievers. If people don’t speak in tongues, cry, and all that during church, then they’re not the real deal.*

*Not that I am saying that is my belief as an adult. I’m an atheist now so I don’t think it’s any of my business what anyone else believes.

Great. Now rape defendants in Missouri will start using the victim’s pregnancy as “evidence” of consent.

Nothing would surprise me any more now that the Show Me state has veered off into Tea Party hell. At least let it be noted how many of us in Missouri are horrified by what our politicians say.

Karalora
12 years ago

@katz

I guess I stand corrected. However, that one comment about the breadth of things that potentially qualify as sexual assault is still reasonable.

cloudiah
12 years ago

Apparently Akin was trying for damage control on Huckabee’s show today, and said what he meant was “forcible” rape. And he somehow thinks that makes it better?

katz
12 years ago

Yes, his sexual assault definition was reasonable.

thebionicmommy
thebionicmommy
12 years ago

I don’t think Akin can do too much damage control, because he believes what he said. The Turner Report has a good blog post on some of Akin’s other “gaffes”. As bad as I dislike Billy Long (aka Big Hat, no Cattle), I really despise Todd Akin. Now I’m betting the Missouri Republican party is going to give him the boot and choose a new Senate nominee. Then again, I shouldn’t expect Missouri Republicans to make smart, pragmatic decisions.

aworldanonymous
12 years ago

Oh deary me, Mary is back?

aworldanonymous
12 years ago

Also, on the bright side, at least this news will make a few people reconsider their support of this guy.

BigMomma
BigMomma
12 years ago

Akin being pressured to resign, a report from the BBC

and i just heard the same story, right now, on my local radio all the way in rural Australia

ithiliana
12 years ago

BigMomma: Great news!

And here’s a statement by a professional organization of obstetricians and gynecologists smacking him down:

http://www.acog.org/About_ACOG/News_Room/News_Releases/2012/Statement_on_Rape_and_Pregnancy

Nanasha
Nanasha
12 years ago

If you don’t have any idea whether or not you’ve gotten consent, it’s better to err on the side of caution and NOT HAVE SEX. Seriously, no one has ever died from not having sex- even if you want to talk about religion, some of the most famous religious figures were celibate.

Honestly, I can’t understand the whole idea of “not knowing” that someone does not want to have sex with you. When you hug someone and they try to pull away and struggle, doesn’t that show they don’t want to be hugged? If you push someone under the water until they stop struggling, does that mean they “asked” to be drowned?

You know what I think? I think that most people KNOW what it means to do something against someone else’s will. I think it’s blindingly obvious and people who don’t respect others space are the people who know damn well what the hell they’re doing.

If a person is a predator, that person is in the wrong, not the person who is being predated upon.

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