Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin, R-Missouri, waves to the crowd while introduced at a senate candidate forum during a Republican conference in Kansas City, Mo. Akin, Missouri’s GOP Senate candidate, has questioned whether women can become pregnant when they’re raped, Sunday, Aug. 19, 2012. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner, file)Republicans’ march to deny abortion to women even in cases of incest and rape is patently cruel and incomprehensible on its face. But it was never apparent that a male Republican congressman actually believes that women possess such mysterious powers over their bodies that they could self-abort — or in Rep. Todd Akin’s words — “shut that whole thing down” in instances of “legitimate rape” to prevent themselves from becoming pregnant.
But, yes, that’s what Rep. Akin, the Missouri GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate and a six-term member of Congress — who with Rep. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential nominee, helped co-sponsor the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” — said he believed in an interview broadcast Sunday on the Jaco Report.
A video clip of Akin’s interview on KTVI-TV confirms his words. On Monday, of course, after a barrage of criticism so intense that many in his party demanded that he step down from the Senate race against Missouri incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill, Akin said meekly that he “misspoke.” He also apologized to anyone he may have offended, which is to say, everyone who knows women have no such power.
His words on tape belie the notion that he misspoke. They show him saying precisely what he believes. In a discussion on his strong views against abortion in all instances, he was asked: “What about in the case of rape, should it be legal or not?” Akin responded:
“Well, you, know, people always want to try to make that as one those things, well, how do you, how do you, slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really where, if it’s a legitimate rape, where the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.