Hoof In Mouth Disease Just Might Save the Nation

 

Ah, Todd Akins.  You are such an intellectual lightweight, I’m not even sure you understand what a favor you have done to the Obama campaign.

     Candidate for U. S. Senator Todd Akin,( r.,) stood at Paul Ryan’s side as Ryan announced his controversial budget plan for the nation

Last year, the “misspeaking” Todd Akin joined with GOP vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as two of the original co-sponsors of the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.” Among other things,this bill sought to differentiate between “forcible rape” and “statutory rape.”  Although that language was eventually removed from H.R. 3, thanks to public outrage, it changed nothing about what we know about Akin and Ryan and their desire to redefine the meaning of rape. 

Mr. Akin’s ridiculous statement on a recent Missouri news program that again indicated a distinction in his addled mind between any old rape and a “legitimate” one.  He went on to say that rape should be punished, but the punishment should be the rapist’s and not the child’s, should s/he somehow thwart his bizarre theory that the female reproductive process can tell the difference between intercourse by force and intercourse by consent.

In other words, the hapless woman should only have access to government-paid abortions if she can prove she was raped by physical force.  Otherwise, I guess the woman is supposed to carry the fetus to term whether she wants to or not. 

That 12-year-old down the block who was impregnated by her 21 year-old brother?  Tough.  According to Akin and Ryan, she shouldn’t have been fooling around, she should know better and she must carry the resulting child to term no matter what harm it may do to her physical or emotional well-being.

Todd Akin can cry, recant, plead and dissemble all he wants, but even the most conservative women in the GOP will have to see him and their party’s Presidential ticket for what they are:  Warriors against the rights of women to determine their own reproductive futures.

Akin is no male version of Mrs. Malaprop.  What word could he have possibly been going for when his mouth accidentally said “legitimate?”  Unfortunate?  I doubt it.

Akin is done for, but Paul Ryan’s problems have only just begun.  American women are wising up every time one of these “gaffes” occurs.  Even the most conservative mother in the country should not want her young daughter to be forced to deliver a baby at age 13 after being taken advantage of by an older relative.  Would Akin and Ryan call that consensual sex?  Is that circumstance any less violent to the health and well-being of the victim?

This position isn’t just conservative; it is downright ignorant.  Akin said it, he meant it, and he will pay for it.  But if the women on the right continue to close their eyes to the real intent of these anti-abortion positions – to exercise unreasonable control over all women’s reproductive issues – and they allow themselves to be bamboozled into voting against their own reproductive rights, this nation will take a giant step back into the 1950s. 

I don’t want to go there.