Akin has been publicly eviscerated and flogged so many ways, it's bordering on sketch comedy at this point. He's sworn to stay in the Senate race, despite the entire Republican Party and their presidential and vice presidential nominees making it known they want him gone.
It can be debated ad nauseum whether or not what he said is true. He did say that he misspoke in using the term "legitimate," when he meant to say "forcible." Even that drew contempt, as if he was implying that there is any rape that isn't "forcible." For the record, there is - and the FBI has been using the term for decades - "statutory." And they are the only two types of rape on the legal books.
There is also a basis for the comment, highlighted in a Tim Townsend article in USA Today, in which Townsend references the origin of the argument being made: a 1972 article by Dr, Fred Mecklenburg, where the doctor said that rape pregnancy was rare, and then listed several reasons why that appeared to be the case, including the hypothesis that trauma will prevent a woman from ovulating, even when she is scheduled to. There is widespread debate, and doubt, in the medical establishment as to the veracity of such a comment, but it has been the fuel for arguments like Akin's ever since.
I can believe logically that trauma affects functions of the body, especially since trauma tends to affect the brain first, and most. Ovulation is the result of of hormones being released in the brain that causes the ovary to release an egg. It wouldn't be hard to imagine that extreme trauma could prevent that from happening. Women do that exact thing with birth control pills every morning - surely it's not so out there to think that other influences in the extreme could do the same thing. But I don't subscribe to this line of thinking, first because it's extremely difficult to define and prove, and second, the fact that it's estimated in Townsend's article that rape could be resulting in 32,000 pregnancies per year kind of shoots the "rarity" claim in the foot. No matter how you try to delineate it, 32,000 is a lot of rape babies.
I don't have a problem with Akin making the statement. Politicians always try to find a justifiable reason to make their argument true - appealing to the science (despite a lack of) is just one more way to sound relevant while saying nothing constructive. My main problem was with what he said next: that "the punishment ought to be on the rapist, and not attacking the child." While I agree with the sentiment, I noticed he never mentioned the woman. Why is that? The woman isn't being punished with a life long reminder of her rapist if she gets pregnant? Why is the woman always left out of the conversation on abortion, except to call her a baby killer? The continued treatment of women as simply the birthing unit has really started to get on my nerves, and comments like the rape debate drives that frustration home. And my other problem is the lapse in logic - even if everything he said were 100% true, how does that give anyone the right to legally dictate what a woman can or cannot do with her body in regards to pregnancy?
This got me to thinking. Why not mandate that all rapists be castrated? You get convicted of rape, we remove your testicles and penis, insert a catheter into the bladder to urinate, and you no longer have genitalia for the rest of your life. How would that go over, I wonder? Probably not well, since the majority of lawmakers are men - and there's just no getting around the unwanted squeamish feeling of empathy. And the "rights to your own fully functioning body" debate would ensue. The government doesn't have the right to force an action onto a human body. The implications of this could be extrapolated to the death penalty as well, but the person not surviving the assault on his body during execution would probably make the "rights" issue moot.
As we can all likely agree that forced castration would probably never happen here, it leads me back around to women. Forcing a woman to accept an imposition on her body is no different than forcing a rapist to accept an imposition on his body. There is a difference, actually - the woman isn't a criminal. And if the pregnancy is a result of rape, the imposition is exponentially compounded. I just don't see how anyone gets around that simple fact. I get that a fetus has no control over how it came into being, and I would never minimize that fact - but how do we leave women out of the equation, and then just expect them to act like grown ups, take it on the chin, and suck it up when we treat them like children who need to be told what they will and won't do with their bodies? And that's exactly what we would be doing if Roe v. Wade were ever repealed.
Mr. Akin, a word of advice: Better to be silent, and thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove any doubt.
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