Akin and his fundamentalist company (many of whom want the government to be officially Christian) have read the sexually perverted Bible, and as believers proudly accept as true those parts that they agree with -- they especially adore the condemnation of same sex sex. Since god says the woman who is raped must marry her rapist, it follows that the woman who is impregnated by her rapist should have no problem bearing the child. After all, god provides. Say a woman really is somehow raped, and that despite her complete horror and revulsion he somehow manages to achieve penetration and ejaculates into her reproductive system. Not to worry. In 1980 James Holmes explained in a letter arguing for constitutionally banning abortion that concern "for rape victims is a red herring because conceptions from rape occur with approximately same frequency as snowfall in Miami." Holmes was later made a federal judge by Bush II. In 1988 Pennsylvania GOP state representative opined that the chance that a woman who is raped will become pregnant are "one in millions and millions and millions," because the trauma of the experience causes women to "secrete a certain secretion" that acts as a spermicide. But wait, there's more. In 1995
What "medical authorities" are Aldridge as well as Akin referring to?
When the Akin statement emerged, many on the left, E. J. Dionne Jr. among them, thought that Akin was daffy when he said that there were doctors who knew that rape does not get women heavy with child. Akin is daffy, but not about the doctor thing. In 1999, president of the National Right to Life Committee, John Willke MD, detailed the theory that an important reason real rape victims rarely get pregnant is "physical trauma". To get and stay pregnant a women's body must produce a very sophisticated mix of hormones. Hormone production is controlled by a part of the brain that 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. So what further percentage reduction in pregnancy will this cause. No one knows, but this factor certainly cuts this last figure by a least 50% and probably more." After the Akin outing of this quack medical opinion, Willke came up with this variation on his theme; rape "is a traumatic thing. She's, shall we say, she's uptight. She is frightened, tight and so on. And sperm, if deposited in her vagina, are less likely to be able to fertilize. The tubes are spastic." Please note that Willke is making this all up. You can tell because in the last century he said that it was hormones that protected women from the rapist's DNA, but now he says that the tubing is smart enough to somehow contract to keep the nasty stuff out. And it is not just Willke. American Family Association medical analyst Bryan Fescher is backing Willke up.
That's what Akin who is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology meant when he said that doctors say rape induced pregnancies are rare. It's right wing MDs who know that your founders established a Christian nation say so. And for theocons that is all that counts. That there is no actual medical evidence that rape suppresses pregnancy compared to consensual intercourse is no way important. Godly doctors know that their perfect loving creator could not be so cruel as to allow women who have been attacked to get pregnant, so they invent some medical sounding statements to that effect, and all true Christians can and must agree. What those secular "mainstream" experts say is of no import, they don't know how god always does the right thing. It follows that few if any women who get pregnant were actually raped. That means she must have been OK with it to some extant and did not do what she and her body could have to avoid the intercourse. In theocon land a women who decides to go along with being raped to spare herself injury and death and get legal justice later was complicit. It then follows that she bears some responsibility for her pregnancy and has no right to discontinue the inconvenience. Since truly good women do not get pregnant via rape, then it follows there is no need to allow escape clauses that women who are "raped" can get abortions. In other words, the desperate zealotry to make any abortion immoral and unobtainable has driven them to devise a faith-based medical belief that eliminates the possibility that rape can cause pregnancy.
There are those who dare disagree. That would be sane, knowledgeable, science-based folk. According to the official crime stats, around 300,000 women are raped in a year. It should come as no surprise that of those about 30,000 become pregnant according to objective research venues such as the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (this is in line with expected pregnancy rates during unprotected intercourse). But of course as far as the hard-line anti-choice folks are concerned those pregnancies could not have been the result of true rape because women who have been truly violated do not get pregnant because the ideal god makes sure they don't suffer from the assault. Ergo the pregnant women cannot be the victims of rape. This rejection of reality is the same illogic as the theocons' belief that mere mortal humans cannot be raising the temperature of the planet because only the Lord Creator God can control the climate of an entire world that only He could create. Pay no attention to what the great bulk of the scientific community says about these things.
Theocons are not, however, consistent about this. The other line they offer is that when a women is pregnant from a rape, she as a supplicant person of god should and must understand that this a gift from her creator, a way that he in his loving wisdom is compensating her for her suffering of the rape with a wonderful baby she can and is obliged to love for the rest of her life.
That sounds patronizing because it is. The theocon anti-abortionists are working very hard at placing women back in their proper traditional place. As second class citizens with extremely restricted reproductive rights that must bow to the demands of the religious right who are the only followers of the perfect god that they not have sex outside marriage, use contraceptives, or have abortions, and if they do that be treated as murderers. Theocons do not consider women mature adults able to make sound decisions in consultation with their doctors as to whether to have or continue a pregnancy, they must be protected by big government from their own sinful foolishness, and from the predatory abortion industry that women are too gullible or sinful to stay away from. That's why anti-abortionists want the government to make sure women who are slutty enough to have an abortion first see an ultrasound of the fetus. They figure prochoice women are children who have to be taken by their hands and be educated by the god-fearing and wise right-wingers against terminating their pregnancy.
And the cynical hypocrisy of the right is astounding. Take Limbaugh who denounces women who deign to have sex outside of Holy Matrimony as sluts while his mainly male audience eats it up. Has Rush been chaste all his life, engaging in sexual activity only with his four wives? That's a huge stretch. What about all those slut despising men in his audience? Surveys show that while a third of Americans say sex out of wedlock is immoral, 95% have it. How about the man who verbally denounced the desperate women who have been helped by Ms. Hoffman as sluts? But hypocrisy is not just about theocon men being sexually active outside marriage while denouncing liberal females for doing it. Take Ann Coulter. She is middle aged, never been married. She is severely anti-abortion (and denounced Akin for putting the Repub victory in peril by not getting out of the race), but there is not the slightest evidence she is anywhere close trying to be chaste, or thinks folks should be. Far from it, on Rivera Live she said, "Let's say I go out every night. I meet a guy and have sex with him. Good for me. I'm not married." On the almost certainly correct presumption that Coulter is as right wingers like to say a fornicator it must also be presumed that she is using contraceptives of some sort or another. This is not a problem per se. Indeed good for her. What is a problem is that the profornicating Coulter, far from being denounced by Limbaugh and theocons in general as being the slut that she is by their standards, is instead a leading heroine of her fellow travelers -- she is even a sex symbol for young male conserves -- who are pushing for abstinence only education and the nonuse of the contraceptives that make nonmarital sex practical. The religious right has no shame. Really, they don't.
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