Todd Akin Has More Thoughts About Women and "Legitimate Rape"
Former Republican Congressman Todd Akin, who learned in 2012 that mansplaining "legitimate rape" is one way of shutting a Senate campaign down, is hawking a memoir that defends his gestational theories. By blaming Hillary Clinton for rape culture.
In a book-promoting interview with the Daily Mail, Akin—the conservative Christian sad-sack who blew a can't miss chance at the Senate by opining on how the female body effectively prevents conception from rape—says it's actually the former first lady, senator, secretary of state, and probable Democratic presidential candidate who's really to blame for all the anti-woman sentiment in America:
'It is incredibly hypocritical that Hillary Clinton would carry on about an imagined "Republican war on women",' the former six-term congressman told MailOnline, 'when she once got a child rapist off the hook who she knew to be guilty, and laughed about how she did it when interviewed.'
'In the process, she de-legitimized the legitimate claims of the 12-year-old victim and then slandered the victim to justify her tactics.'
Akin refers to an old case that resurfaced last week when a blog for young conservative bros published audiotapes of Clinton discussing a 1975 rape case to which she was appointed as a defense attorney. Listeners were shocked to learn from Clinton's callous remarks that she might actually have been a relentlessly ambitious lawyer whose lawyering exhibited lawyerly tendencies.
Akin's long-titled book, "Firing Back: Taking on the Party Bosses and Media Elite to Protect Our Faith and Freedom," includes an even longer defense of his "legitimate rape" statement:
'When a woman claims to have been raped, the police determine if the evidence supports the legal definition of "rape",' Akin writes. 'Is it a legitimate claim of rape or an excuse to avoid an unwanted pregnancy? Are the police warranted to take action against a crime or not?'
'In short, the word "legitimate" modifies the claim and not the action. There have been women who have lied about being raped, as Norman [sic] McCorvey did before the U.S. Supreme Court. The infamous Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 was based on a lie.'
Serious note: The story of Norma McCorvey is especially fraught and loaded with "legitimate" rapes, abusive family members, and multiple unwanted pregnancies. But were the Supreme Court's Roe decision materially "based on a lie," as Akin claims, it could be revisited by the court. It has not been.
'My comment about a woman's body shutting the pregnancy down,' Akin adds in the book, 'was directed to the impact of stress on fertilization. This is something fertility doctors debate and discuss. Doubt me? Google "stress and fertilization," and you will find a library of research on the subject.'
'The research is not conclusive, but there is considerable evidence that stress makes conception more difficult. And what could be more stressful than a rape?'
Indeed. Shut it down, everybody. Shut it all down.