Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Akin joins the ranks of dumb and dumber...

Is nothing too stupid for politicians to say?  Learning of Rep. Todd Akin's ludicrous remark that  "First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy after rape] is really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." I am guessing not. The utter idiocy of the remark is beyond belief. 

Basing his opinion on Dr. John C Wilkins statements that “This is a traumatic thing — she’s, shall we say, she’s uptight,” Dr. Willke said of a woman being raped, adding, “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.”seems ridiculous when experts time and time again has shot down this theory, and statistics show that 32,000 pregnancies are caused by rape every year. (Source NY Times and CNN)

Thankfully Dr. Wilkins is now 87 years old, and I assume, no longer seeing patients. God help the ones he has treated over the years if he has practiced all medicine with the same kind of quack theories!  I wonder though, if he would ever testify to this in court as a defense in a rape case.  "No, ma'am, she is pregnant, so there is no way this was a legitimate rape."

Do we still need to argue that the Republican party has waged "War on Women"? It seems every week they come up with something else that would take us back to the 1950's...but Mr. Akin is just over the top stupid with this comment. I also find that he completely lacks understanding of a rape victim's state of mind, and compassion for what she would go through if forced to carry out a pregnancy caused by a rape. He has spent most of the last couple of days retracting his statement and claiming to have great empathy for the victims. I don't buy it. If that was true, he would not have made the remark in the first place. 


So of course I wonder; how can anyone trust him to make sounds decisions about anything when he so clearly is not in touch with reality on this issue? I guess all we can hope for, is that the voters will use their votes more intelligently than Rep. Akin uses his voice.


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