Akin Unmasks the Pro-Life Movement

[phantom power]

If you’re going to slander the estimated 32,000 women a year who become pregnant after being raped, it’s probably not wise to do it on a Sunday, when it will lead the next week’s news coverage. Republican nominee for Missouri Senate Todd Akin chose not to follow this bit of wisdom, instead declaring in a television interview yesterday that women can’t get pregnant from rape.

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

For people who don’t follow the anti-choice movement closely, this statement might be a stunner for the simple reason that it makes no biological sense; a rapist’s sperm swims as well as a non-rapist’s. But for those of us who do, it’s no surprise. The myth that “real” rapes don’t result in pregnancy is widespread among anti-choicers—and not just the fringe (Akin, for instance, used to be on the board of Missouri Right to Life). You can see a variation of this myth at the anti-choice website Abortion Facts:

To get pregnant and stay pregnant, a woman’s body must produce a very sophisticated mix of hormones. Hormone production is controlled by a part of the brain which is easily influenced by emotions. There’s no greater emotional trauma that can be experienced by a woman than an assault rape. This can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy.

Akin’s comment should serve as a reminder that despite its sentimentality surrounding the fetus, the anti-choice movement is motivated by misogyny and ignorance about human sexuality. In this case, what underlies the rape-doesn’t-get-you-pregnant myth is the notion that sex is shameful and that slutty women will do anything—even send an innocent man to jail to kill a baby—in order to avoid facing the consequences of their actions.

http://prospect.org/article/akin-unmasks-pro-life-movement

[coalition_unwilling]

1. Thanks for posting! A lot of good analysis of Akin's comments and

tbe misogyny for which he's one of the frontman.

[Dawson Leery]

2. For those people who do not believe in abortion for ANY reason

they are led by a desire to keep women in their place.

[DearAbby]

3. What gives them the right to define rape?

Shouldn't that determination be left up to me? It is I who gives consent, or not. I don't need congress to define it for me.

I feel like chattel, on a block, and they are looking at my teeth. Hours upon Hours of debate in congress, placing arguments by men, on what constitutes a rape, in the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD...like I am a cow...FUCK YOU.

[get the red out]

4. +1

They hide behind their extremist religion like they were the Taliban.

[loyalsister]

5. "shut that whole thing down"???

is at least as dehumanizing as the idea of "legitimate vs no legitimate rape"

[modem77]

6. Should be called the Pro-Hate movement.

Many Christian conservative men hate the idea of women having rights.