Todd Akin No Longer Sorry For ‘Legitimate Rape’ Comments


Todd Akin, who came to national prominence after making a series of comments denying that rape is rape, is back to talk about rape — and this time, he isn’t sorry.

We haven’t heard much about Todd Akin since he was chased off the scene by people upset over his comments about rape not always being rape. But in the Missouri Republican’s new book, Firing Back: Taking on the Party Bosses and Media Elite to Protect Our Faith and Freedom, Akin backpedals on his initial post rape apology apology.

In case you missed it, back then, Akin attempted to discern between “legitimate rape” and other forms of rape, denying that pregnancy as a result of rape was likely to occur in any case.

Infamously qualifying his absurd statement by saying that the female body has “ways of shutting” an unwanted pregnancy due to rape down, the politician now blames both his own party and progressives for his defeat, lamenting in the book:

“I was the target of a media assassination…. So it really didn’t matter about what I said, or logic, or truth. I had mentioned ‘abortion’ and ‘rape.’ That was enough. It was simply an assassination.”

As for “logic, or truth,” Akin now fiercely insists that he never meant to cast doubt on rape victims, he merely thinks that women often invoke the specter of rape to “get out of” an unwanted pregnancy.

Akin says that what he spoke of was the effect of stress on fertility, which is not actually recognized as a form of contraception, but still.

He explains:

“My comment about a woman’s body shutting the pregnancy down was directed to the impact of stress on fertilization. This is something fertility doctors debate and discuss. Doubt me? Google ‘stress and infertility,’ and you will find a library of research on the subject.”

Akin believes that he should be sorry for being sorry, because in his mind, apologizing is what made people find his words offensive… or something. He says in his book:

“By asking the public at large for forgiveness, I was validating the willful misinterpretation of what I had said.”

While Akin’s belief that rape never results in pregnancy sounds odd to modern humans with access to science and medical data, indeed the belief was common historically. In medieval times, a man could use a woman’s pregnancy as evidence to defend himself against a rape accusation, as early societies believed that pregnancy only resulted from enjoyable sex.

However, Todd Akin might be surprised to learn that an estimated 25,000 to 32,000 pregnancies result from rape each year in the United States alone.

[Image: Todd Akin]

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