And we bring you today’s controversy, in which a Republican candidate for Senate from Missouri, Todd Akin, says something that puts him in very hot water indeed.
But before His Imperial Majesty says anything at all, look at the video. All 38 seconds of it. It’s important.
Got it? Because if you later post a comment conclusively proving that you didn’t, you’ll be talking to the hand. It’s only 38 seconds.
Clearly Mr. Akin has some ‘splaining to do, because that whole Q&A got completely derailed the moment he started talking about “legitimate rape.” After all, what is “legitimate rape?” According to His Imperial Majesty it’s either Statutory Rape where the raped party is not able to give informed consent or any situation in which the raped party was not giving her (or his, but most commonly her) consent. As in “no.” No means no. Period. End. Stop.
If he meant to say “forcible rape”, then he should have bloody well said so. Of course, sometimes you choose the wrong words by mistake, but then you have to explain yourself later. If he did mean “forcible rape”, then he’s absolutely right about the body having ways of “shutting down” pregnancy or, more accurately, “making it less likely that pregnancy results.” It isn’t “new science”, it’s been known since before His Imperial Majesty went to med school and it’s really not all that surprising a finding. The sheer trauma, psychological as well as physical, of forcible rape has a way of messing up that whole complicated process of getting pregnant and yes, it is a complex biological process as anybody who has tried to get pregnant without success will know. Now throw in the trauma of being raped by some asshat subhuman and things get even more complicated.
Obviously “less likely” is NOT the same as “never happens”, but Akin acknowledges that in the video.
What really, truly has His Imperial Majesty scratching his head is why Akin felt compelled to add that bit at all, since it was a fairly straight forward question: “Should abortion be legal in the case of rape?” Akin even answers it at the end, so why in the name of Cthulhu’s left testicle did he not just do that? Maybe he meant to emphasize the known facts that rape is (thankfully) rare and pregnancy from rape is even rarer so’s to counter the usual leftist blather where they justify abortion on demand, anywhere anytime for any reason, by pointing to rape victims (because who doesn’t sympathize with rape victims?) or the even rarer cases of medical emergencies. Which is really not all that different from trying to justify eliminating the Second Amendment altogether because a few asshats use their weapons in ways they were never intended to be used, but we’re digressing here.
Who knows? It’s not for us to guess, it’s for Akin to clarify, and he’s clearly got some clarifying to do.
But it may or may not matter once the loony left (and, sadly, ADD-suffering bloggers on the right who seem to not have had the time to watch the video based on some of their comments) are done demagogueing the everloving shit out of the issue.
“Legitimate rape?” WTF, over? Mr. Akin? Hellooo?
Thatisall.