Of Love and Lawn Mowers: Conservatives Don't Get Consent and Consciousness

Conservatives say stupid things they think are clever. 

The more extreme the Tea Bagger politics, usually the dumber and less insightful the comment.  Facts are not on the side of the radical right wingers like Rep. Steve King of Iowa in his opposition to same sex marriage equality.

Conservatives are consistently poor on understanding the law -- I would opine it is not that they are incapable, it is they don't want to understand it.  Conservatives are also sadly consistent in being insulting to not only gay people but to women generally, and to the very institution of marriage they claim to be defending.

Here is the latest from Rep. Steve King, consistent with his history of ill-conceived and stupid statements.  From Think Progress:

If You Want To Marry Your Lawnmower, Steve King Believes That’s Now Legal

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is one of Congress’s most vocal opponents of marriage equality, and he hasn’t backed off since the Supreme Court ended the debate with its June decision in the Obergefell case. He’s proposed a resolution to have Congress reject the ruling because it “perverts the definition of marriage” and assert that states and businesses can refuse to recognize same-sex marriages. This week, he added some colorful rhetoric to punctuate his point.
As reported by journalist Matt Taibbi, while introducing Mike Huckabee at a campaign event on Thursday, King claimed that according to the Supreme Court’s ruling, “You can marry my lawnmower.”
This, however, was not even the first time King had contemplated lawnmower marriage. He’s actually been making the remark since just after the ruling came down. In late June, he was quoted as saying, “Their ruling really says anybody can marry anybody — and eventually it will be in any combination. I had a strong, Christian lawyer tell me yesterday that, under this decision that he has read, what it brings about is: It only requires one human being in this relationship — that you could marry your lawnmower with this decision. I think he’s right.”
King has a long history of making incendiary remarks about the LGBT community. He opposes nondiscrimination protections because he believes people will pretend to be gay in order to file suits; he called such protections “special rights for self-professed behavior.” If people are afraid of discrimination, he believes they should just hide their identities in the workplace so that nobody knows they’re gay in the first place. He thinks same-sex couples who want to marry are just friends, and he doesn’t expect to see any gay people in heaven.
Incidentally, Sen. Chuck Grassley, fellow Republican from Iowa and fellow opponent of same-sex marriage, was tweeting pictures Friday of a rig he set up to mow his lawn with three lawnmowers at the same time. His decision to highlight his marriage of three lawnmowers the day after King’s latest remarks may have just been a coincidence.

No one should have to live by hiding their identities in order to work, to have a place to live, or to be treated fairly and equally by any branch of government. I can think of no one less qualified to lecture anyone on who is and is not going to heaven than King, or his buddies in hate - and lies.

There is nothing in the SCOTUS decision that says a marriage only requires one human being.  There is nothing in the SCOTUS decision that says anyone can marry anyone either - marriage is still restricted to two people at a time, and there are still restrictions on matters such as age of consent, and biological relationships.  Incestuous relationships have not become legal by the most recent SCOTUS decision.

We have something similar from people like Rick Santorum, who make equally vile and offensive claims about bestiality -- which is, sadly, legal in some red-neck states, and which at least one teabagger politician has admitted to engaging.  Which sheds a little context on these holier than thou bigots, and explains were maybe they get their ideas about the evil sexual practices of others - from projecting their own behavior.  From the HuffPo:

For Senator Thad Cochran, Mississippi memories are neither sacred nor precious. Campaigning in Pine Belt, Miss., Senator Cochran recalled "fun" "adventures" roaming the Pine Belt countryside, "Picking up pecans... indecent things with animals." (Props to the Clarion Ledger's video proof.)

Here is the thing; lawn mowers and farm animals are just two groups that lack any capacity for consent.  So far as I can see, even the most rabid, drooling knuckle draggers DO acknowledge that same-sex marriage involves consent, as does sex between people who are not married.

Conservatives struggle with the concept of consent.  They have attempted for example to redefine the legal concept of rape to be only forcible rape. Everyone remembers Sen. Akin who insisted that any rape that resulted in pregnancy was not "legitimate rape".  That definition he and other teabaggers espoused of forcible rape would exclude any victim of statutory rape -- right wingers like the supposedly religious Duck Dynasty preacher encourages marriage to underage girls.  He recommends wives who are vulnerable and dependent and who are easily dominated and ordered around.  Donald Trump, accused of marital rape, used through his attorney that a husband cannot rape his wife as a defene of sexual assault.  And of course, we have seen too often the defense of rape of those who are drugged or otherwise unconscious that it is not rape if the victim did not say "No" due to incapacitation.  In conservative states, in fact, the legal age of consent has always been low, for either sex in the context of statutory rape or child marriage.

From OnTopMag:

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum claims that the Supreme Court's recent ruling striking down state bans on gay marriage proves his “man on dog” warning was correct.

In 2003, Santorum predicted that if the high court struck down state laws criminalizing sodomy in Lawrence v. Texas, then “you have the right to anything” including pedophilia and “man on dog” relationships.

...The decision “has certainly opened the door for a variety of other things that are going to happen,” he answered when asked whether the ruling would lead to polygamy.

It is hard to tell what the pervy consevatives actually believe or understand -- pervy because they pursue underage girls, commit adultery, and are consumers of porn to a greater degree than non-conservatives. 

Do they really believe we will have rampant bestiality?  Do they really think people will be able to marry garden equipment?  I doubt it, although some of the more gullible certainly do believe ridiculous things from figures like King and Santorum (the perennial presidential wannabee, not the other stuff dubbed with that name.  There are a LOT of poorly educated and highly propgandized folks on the right, who want to stay that way, an exercise in aggressive willful ignorance.

No, I think this is just their way of trying to denigrate and disparage and demean their fellow Americans, and to exploit the rabble for their profit.  However you parse it, it is ugly and should be beneath our political discourse.  It drags us down as a nation.  Shame on the right; shame shame SHAME.

Iowa Congressman Stephen King Doesn't Believe Incest OR Statutory Rape Can Result in Pregnancy

This is the result of so-called abstinence education that perpetuates myths, and the worst kinds of reproductive ignorance.  These are the old white men who perpetuate conservative myths in legislation, without ever bothering to fact check any of their beliefs, no matter how implausible or ridiculous they are. The older and/or more conservative, the worse they seem to be, not only on this topic, but on every topic requiring some form of basic factual education.

If anything, maybe Mike Huckabee should sit down with King and give him a little bio lesson on the REAL origins of Ethel Waters.  I can't wait, on the basis of a stupid belief by Steve King for the denial of the reproductive choice of non-violent statutory rape and incest next time the House of Representatives meets to engage in right wing culture war on women.

I continue to ask myself how anyone who is older than say.....9 years of age, could possibly believe the factually inaccurate things that these old white conservative men believe.   King has at least a high school education, some college, and comes from an agricultural district where presumably he might have encountered some animal husbandry knowledge of the birds and the bees.  It's not like he's one of those urban dwellers who have never seen livestock.

The following only serves to prove not only how badly informed and out of touch the Tea Party far right extremists are, but how bone ignorant, as a group, they tend to be.  No one should allow someone this foolish, this ill-informed, this generally ignorant of the most basic facts of life to propose or vote on legislation at any level, much less the federal level where it affects the entire nation.  King should be deeply ashamed of his deficiencies.  No wonder these dolts don't believe in global warming, or evolution; we should probably be grateful if they understand the earth is not flat and that the earth rotates around the sun.  While King's office tries to do damage control, it sure sounds like this guy believes that as with forcible rape, it just doesn't happen except as a freakishly rare occurrence, when in fact the opposite is true.

From Talking Points Memo:

Rep. Steve King: I’ve Never Heard Of A Girl Getting Pregnant From Statutory Rape Or Incest

10 inShare. share Evan McMorris-Santoro-August 21, 2012, 12:12 PM363083 Updated at 1:59 p.m. Rep. Steve King, one of the most staunchly conservative members of the House, was one of the few Republicans who did not strongly condemn Rep. Todd Akin Monday for his remarks regarding pregnancy and rape. King also signaled why — he might agree with parts of Akin’s assertion. King told an Iowa reporter he’s never heard of a child getting pregnant from statutory rape or incest. “Well I just haven’t heard of that being a circumstance that’s been brought to me in any personal way,” King told KMEG-TV Monday, “and I’d be open to discussion about that subject matter.” A Democratic source flagged King’s praise of Akin in the KMEG interview to TPM. But potentially more controversial for King is his suggestion that pregnancies from statutory rape or incest don’t exist or happen rarely. A 1996 review by the Guttmacher Institute found “at least half of all babies born to minor women are fathered by adult men.” Contacted by TPM, King’s office said that King didn’t mean he had never heard of pregnancy resulting from statutory rape or incest but that he had no direct, personal knowledge of such instances. “What he was saying was, he personally does not know a girl who was raped,” Brittany Lesser, a spokesperson for King said. “He never says, ‘I’ve never heard of that.’ There’s a fine line between ‘I’ve never heard of that’ and ‘I don’t know personally anybody who’s been raped. There’s a difference. There is a difference.” The tie between statutory rape and teen pregnancy has been the subject of ad campaigns from groups like United Way. H.R. 3, the bill co-sponsored by King, Akin and Paul Ryan in 2011, originally called for an exemption in the federal ban on abortion funding only in the case of “forcible rape.” That language was dropped after pressure from women’s advocates and Democrats. At the time, the Republican sponsors of the legislation weren’t too interested in discussing their reasoning for the wording. RELATED: Todd Akin Says Victims of ‘Legitimate Rape’ Don’t Get Pregnant King’s comments offer a window into the thinking behind the language, as well as the general belief in the different categories of rape that provoked Akin’s recent controversial comments about “legitimate rape” and the factually wrong idea that a woman’s body can prevent a pregnancy from rape. Lesser said “of course” King is aware that girls have been impregnated by statutory rape or incest, and said King supports people who have not been forcibly raped receiving federal abortion coverage under a rape exemption. “That’s a given for anybody who understands pro-life legislation,” Lesser said. In the KMEG interview, King defended Akin as “a strong Christian man, with a wonderful family” and appeared to push back on those calling for Akin to drop out of the Missouri Senate race. “I think this election should be about: How did Todd Akin vote and what did he vote for and what did he stand for?” King said. “In this case, I’m seeing the same thing, petty, personal attacks substituting for strong policy.” Watch raw video of the KMEG interview below. The version of the story as it was broadcast is here.

UPDATE 2:
After this post was published, King’s office said he had been taken out of context.

As TPM originally reported, King’s response to a question about whether a young girl who gets pregnant should have to carry a baby to term was, “I just haven’t heard of that being a circumstance that’s been brought to me in any personal way.” King was not asked whether he knew anyone personally who had been in such a circumstance.
Lesser said “of course” King is aware that girls have been impregnated by statutory rape or incest, and said King supports people who have not been forcibly raped receiving federal abortion coverage under a rape exemption.
“That’s a given for anybody who understands pro-life legislation,” Lesser said.
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Apparently not, not in the case of King, not in the case of Ryan, not in the case of Akin, and certainly not in the case of many other Republicans and Tea Partiers I've profiled in the last few days.  But then when it comes to reproductive rights, these individuals say so much that is not true, it is perhaps understandable that they confuse themselves as to facts more than anyone else.
 

Missouri GOP Leader, Worse than Todd Akin

Yes, some Republicans, particularly in Missouri, are even worse than Todd Akin.  This woman is stupid in her thinking, and a disgrace to her gender and to humanity.

This is trying to condone pregnancy resulting from rape by claiming it was somehow God's will or that God cooperated in it.  Wow, way to go - believing a rape victim is not just raped by a man, she's raped and impregnated by God and with God's help, if you're a demented anti-abortion wing nut.

Here is a more rational point of view.  If you're raped and become pregnant, you don't have to go through 9 more months of being victimized; you can get an abortion.  God has nothing to do with either the rape or the pregnancy.  Those are entirely through the free will of a human being.

Unless you hold a view of religion which is pure superstition. If you wish to invoke a supernatural influence in rape, it would be more appropriate to claim the other extreme - evil, the Devil. (No, I don't recommend that either, but it is actually slightly more logical than the cuckoo-land right wing view.)

There is NOTHING whatsoever in the holy texts of any of the Abrahamic religions which supports this assertion about God.  There is nothing in any OTHER religious texts of any of the other major world religions which supports it either.

from the Examiner:


Sharon Barnes, Missouri GOP leader

• election 2012

GOP official says God chooses to bless raped women with pregnancy

The state of Missouri has been in the national spotlight recently because of comments made by Republican Congressman Todd Akin who claimed that raped women rarely get pregnant. After his statements hit the Internet, immediate outrage burned across the country. Akin later apologized, but his statements have rekindled a nationwide debate. One that republicans desperately do not want to have, lest they alienate a wide majority of female voters.
Sharon Barnes, a high ranking state Republican, came to the defense of her conservative colleague who she believes only "phrased it (his statement) badly."
Barnes was quoted by The New York Times saying, "abortion is never an option." Barnes went on to biblically claim that, "If God has chosen to bless this person [the rape victim] with a life, you don’t kill it."
Barnes did not elaborate on her views for post-pregnancy care, or costs.
Barnes has been a figure in conservative St. Louis politics for years, and currently holds all of the following titles according to her Linkedin profile:

1. President of The 2nd Congressional District Republican Women
2. President of The Republican Women's Club of St. Louis
3. Vice President, Membership Committee at National Federation Of Republican Women
4. Vice President of The Missouri Federation of Republican Women
5. Chairman of The St. Louis City Republican Central Committee
6. State Committeewoman, 4th Senate District at Missouri Republican Party
7. Committeewoman, 24th Ward at Missouri Republican Party
8. Volunteer at GOP Missouri Republican Party

As her comments become more known the GOP will attempt to spin Barnes' clout in the party as little, when in reality she is a big player behind the scenes.

This is on a par with Mike Huckabee trying to spin comments by Akin:

“Ethel Waters, for example, was the result of a forcible rape,” Huckabee said of the late American gospel singer. One-time presidential candidate Huckabee added: “I used to work for James Robison back in the 1970s, he leads a large Christian organization. He, himself, was the result of a forcible rape. And so I know it happens, and yet even from those horrible, horrible tragedies of rape, which are inexcusable and indefensible, life has come and sometimes, you know, those people are able to do extraordinary things.”

So what?  There are many children who are not born from rape who go on to be good people.  Being raped or not raped hasn't anything to do with it.  It is like the stupid pro-life email that circulates about Beethoven, syphilis and tuberculosis as an argument against abortion:

'If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three of whom were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded (all because she had syphilis), would you recommend that she have an abortion? Then you would have killed Beethoven.'

Huckabee makes a false argument in support of rape pregnancies, like the factually challenged Beethoven/ tuberculosis/ syphilis argument.  Anyone can potentially overcome the circumstances of their birth; however, medical and other circumstances are still legitimate considerations for any woman who is pregnant or may be pregnant, and overwhelmingly, the odds are not in favor of a rape pregnancy producing an exceptional human being any more than any other pregnancy is likely to produce a genius, or great humanitarian or religious leader.  Odds more unfavorable than winning a lottery are not the basis for a life decision.

But while we are on the topic of failed arguments against abortion, let me fact check the anti-abortion email I've seen circulating way too many times since going on line.

Here are the Beethoven bio facts:
Peter and Jean Medawar,* in The Life Science, attribute the following version [of the Beethoven Fallacy] to Norman St John Stevas (now Lord St John), a British Member of Parliament and prominent Roman Catholic layman. He, in turn, got it from Maurice Baring (1874-1945), a noted Roman Catholic convert and close associate of those Catholic stalwarts G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. He cast it in the form of a hypothetical dialogue between two doctors.

'About the terminating of pregnancy, I want your opinion. The father was syphilitic, the mother tuberculous. Of the four children born, the first was blind, the second died,
the third was deaf and dumb, the fourth was also tuberculous. What would you have done?'
'I would have terminated the pregnancy.'
'Then you would have murdered Beethoven.'

The Internet is riddled with so-called pro-life web sites that repeat this ridiculous story, and incidentally change factual premises with wanton abandon. Here's another version.

'If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three of whom were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded (all because she had syphilis), would you recommend that she have an abortion? Then you would have killed Beethoven.'

This rendering of the legend demotes the great composer from fifth to ninth in the birth order, raises the number born deaf to three and the number born blind to two, and gives syphilis to the mother instead of the father. Most of the forty-three websites I found when searching for versions of the story attribute it not to Maurice Baring but to a certain Professor L. R. Agnew at UCLA Medical School, who is said to have put the dilemma to his students and to have told them, 'Congratulations, you have just murdered Beethoven.' We might charitably give L. R. Agnew the benefit of doubting his existence - it is amazing how these urban legends sprout. I cannot discover whether it was Baring who originated the legend, or whether it was invented earlier.

For invented it certainly was. It is completely false. The truth is that Ludwig van Beethoven was neither the ninth child nor the fifth child of his parents. He was the eldest - strictly the number two, but his elder sibling died in infancy, as was common in those days, and was not, so far as is known, blind or deaf or dumb or mentally  retarded. There is no evidence that either of his parents had syphilis, although it is true that his mother eventually died of tuberculosis. There was a lot of it about at the time.

And while we are on the topic of bad examples, this should be noted about Ethel Waters (from wikipedia) - her mother was approximately 13 when she was raped; and Ethel Waters said of her childhood (such as it was):
"Ethel Waters was raised in poverty and never lived in the same place for more than 15 months. She said of her difficult childhood, "I never was a child. I never was cuddled, or liked, or understood by my family."^[2]

Ethel Waters went on herself to marry at 13.  That she was able to make a career out of her singing was the result of pure luck. Her life after leaving home was far from ideal, again per wikipedia: "As she described it later, "I used to work from nine until unconscious."^[4   Again, quoting wikiepedia, she wrote of the lies surrounding the circumstances of her birth, "She explains why her age has often been misstated, saying that her mother had to sign a paper saying she was four years older than she was, and that she was born in 1896. In her second autobiography, To Me, It's Wonderful, Waters states that she was born in 1900.^[7

The reality of childhood rape is that it is unlikely to result in a talent who is discovered on the order of magnitude of Ethel Waters.  It is more likely to result in the kind of family situations that lead to child abuse like that reported by Ethel Waters, and in both mother and child failing to get an education or to do more than barely survive in life - if they manage that. 

Huckabee argues an exception that proves the rule. At least he was more factual than the pro-life email, but not by much.

Condemn Todd Akin, for Hobnobbing Around with Misogynist Quacks and Dangerous Frauds

Remember the popsie veep candidate Palin, with her campaigning on Obama "palling around with terrorists"?  Obama was 8 when Bill Ayers did some terrible things as part of the protests to stop the Viet Nam War, which arguably had some equally terrible aspects, both to Americans, and to the Vietnamese, Cambodians, and others.  I do not suggest here that the terrible incidents like the Mai Lai massacre justified blowing up buildings or other violence, but only to suggest that PEACEFUL PROTESTING had a very real justification, and that there was a larger context of violence against protesters taking place that should be considered to more fairly understand the complexity of that controversy and conflict.  I would argue that if you are going to condemn violence from one side, you must condemn the violence equally from the opposite side of this controversy in our history. 

Palin did nothing of the kind; she instead tried to smear President Obama, then Senator Obama, by apparently holding him responsible for the actions in earlier years of Bill Ayers, at a time when Obama didn't even live in the United States, as a child.  When Obama did know Ayers, he had resolved his issues with the years during which he had committed violent acts, and he had moved on to become a respected professor, and civic contributor.  Obama met the later individual, not the wild protester, and that individual was a very different person than the violent anti-war activist.
from wikipedia:

In 1997 Chicago awarded him its Citizen of the Year award for his work on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge project.^[48]
William C. Ibershof, formerly the lead federal prosecutor in the Weather Underground case, wrote in 2008: "Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen."^[68]
Ayers was elected Vice President for Curriculum Studies by the American Educational Research Association in 2008.^[69] William H. Schubert, a fellow professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, wrote that his election was "a testimony of [Ayers'] stature and [the] high esteem he holds in the field of education locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally."^[70]
Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Frank praised Ayers as a "model citizen" and a scholar whose "work is esteemed by colleagues of different political viewpoints."^[71]
In an October 2010 Chicago Sun Times editorial Attacks on Ayers distort our history, former students of Ayers and UIC Alumni, Daniel Schneider and Adam Kuranishi, responded in opposition to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees' decision to deny Ayers Emeritus status. They write, "We juxtaposed the image of him painted by the media with the teacher we saw in class; and the two could not be more distinct. The Ayers in the media was frozen in time; he never left the 1960s, never aged out of his 20s, and never grew in perspective. As his students, we see through this representation... Ayers is still committed to movements for peace and justice. His worldview and tactics are evolved and elaborate, thoughtful and wise, making him unrecognizable to the media's caricature. Should we not expect someone to evolve after 40 years? One may disagree with his activism, but it is impossible to ignore his hard work and contributions to urban education, juvenile justice reform, the University of Illinois and Chicago."^[72]

It was wrong to try to tar Obama with the brush of guilt by association. It was wrong of conservatives to misrepresent the closeness of any relationship - in other words the phrase 'palling around' - as a fraudulent exaggeration, one which implied approval, endorsement or encouragement of Ayer's violent past.  Rumors on the right even tried to suggest Ayers wrote the books authored by Obama.

This was a contrived relationship that did not really exist as portrayed by Palin and others on the right. The reality was entirely different, as noted here:
A controversy arose regarding Obama's contact with Bill Ayers, a Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a former leader of the Weather Underground, a radical left organization in the 1970s.^[172] Investigations by The New York Times, CNN, concluded that Obama does not have a close relationship with Ayers.^{[173][174][175]} Ayers served on two nonprofit boards with Obama and in 1995, Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, hosted a gathering at their home,^[176] where Alice Palmer introduced Obama as her chosen successor in the Illinois State Senate.^[174][177]
The matter was initially raised by Sean Hannity and other hosts on conservative talk radio programs, and then by moderator George Stephanopoulos during a debate between Clinton and Obama in April 2008. In October 2008, the matter was mentioned in attack ads, robocalls, mass mailings, and campaign speeches by Republican presidential candidate John McCain^{[citation needed]} and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as an issue in the general election campaign. Obama has condemned Ayers' past,^[178][179] and stated that he does not have a close association with him.^[176]

That Obama did not 'pal around with terrorists' was confirmed by multiple news organizations and by multiple fact checking sources.

In contrast we have a close supporting relationship between Todd Akin and the originator of the horrific lie that women can't get pregnant from rape, specifically violent rape.  This is the basis for attempting to insert language into legislation that would specify ONLY the most brutally violent rape as  a limitation on abortions for all cases of rape.

In fact, Todd Akin continues to use the phrase VIOLENT in connection with rape, over and over and over, most recently in the Wednesday August 22, 2012 interview with Good Morning America.  Rape is always non-consensual, but it is not always violent, which appears to be the only kind of rape acknowledged by Wilke. It is not necessarily violent when someone is drugged and then raped; it is not always violent when a child is incestuously raped, but only emotionally, psychologically, or verbally coercive; it is not always violent when a vulnerable person is raped, such as a person who is disabled physically or mentally, because violence is not required in those circumstances to overcome the victim's refusal.

Todd Akin is STILL welcoming the support of the incredibly offensive man who continues to assert that women do not become pregnant from forcible or violent rape.  Jack C. Wilke should have his medical license revoked for practicing substandard and unprofessional medicine for his utterly and dangerously unscientific claims.  Wilke man is a charlatan, who continues to support and in turn receives the support of Todd Akin.

There is no guilt by association in an objection to the support of Jack Wilke for Todd Akin; there is a perfectly appropriate assignment of guilt to both of them for continuing to affirm these views which are so harmful to rape victims, and so harmful to all women by extension.

As noted in the L.A. Times :

Rep. Todd Akin takes questions after speaking at the Missouri Farm Bureau candidate interview in Jefferson City, Mo. (Christian Gooden / St. Louis Post-Dispatch / Associated Press / August 10, 2012)

Related photos »

Todd Akin touts support from crusader who espoused theories on rape

• Also
• Photos: 'Legitimate rape' and other career-limiting candidate quotes
• Todd Akin says he will 'rush to the gunfire,' stay in Senate race
• Todd Akin not alone in adhering to bogus rapist theory

 By Lisa Mascaro and Kim Geiger

August 21, 2012, 12:53 p.m.

WASHINGTON -- Missouri Republican Todd Akin's troubled Senate campaign blasted out a letter of support Tuesday from the antiabortion crusader who promoted the theory that victims of rape do not usually become pregnant.

Akin's decision to release the letter from Dr. Jack Willke, founder of the International Right to Life Federation, sends a mixed message from the GOP congressman, who has apologized repeatedly for having said "legitimate rape" rarely leads to pregnancy.

"The pro-life movement and I unequivocally stand with Rep. Akin. How could we not?" Willke wrote in the letter. "Rep. Akin will make the U.S. Senate a safer place for the most vulnerable in our nation.
"It's time for Republican leaders to rise to the level of Rep. Akin's principle and courage and stand with him and the Republican platform that stands for the protection of every human life."

PHOTOS: "Legitimate rape" and other disastrous quotes

Willke said he was overnighting copies of his book, "Abortion, Questions and Answers," to Akin, noting that "there is a full chapter on this issue, fully documented, which completely exonerates him."

The Akin campaign has been in turmoil as supporters have pulled ads and Republican leaders are pressuring him to withdraw from the Senate race. Mitt Romney's presidential campaign distanced itself from the embattled candidate, and party leaders are calling him personally, explaining that his candidacy threatens to disrupt races across the GOP ticket.

Akin's refusal to step aside pits the party's establishment and its fiscal-conservative flank against those on the religious right, who have long championed the six-term congressman's strict antiabortion views. The Family Research Council's Action PAC also defended Akin this week.
Willke and his wife, Barbara, are leading antiabortion advocates. Their book, first published in 1971, asserts that "assault rape" rarely results in pregnancy because the assault traumatizes the woman and makes her body less habitable.

It's "just downright unusual" for a woman to get pregnant from a rape, Willke said in an interview Monday.

"This goes back 30 and 40 years. When a woman is assaulted and raped, there's a tremendous amount of emotional upset within her body," Willke said, adding that this trauma "can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy."
It might also make a woman's fallopian tubes "tight," he said.
Willke estimated that there are just one or two pregnancies for every 1,000 rapes.

That contradicts research published in the Journal of American Obstetrics and Gynecology in the 1990s that found the occurrence of rape-related pregnancies is 5%. More than 32,000 women experience rape-related pregnancy every year, the research found.

Willke's book has gained currency among some conservative antiabortion activists.
Akin has apologized for his comments, saying "I used the wrong words in the wrong way," and his campaign produced an ad Tuesday morning asking for forgiveness.
Willke said he reached out to talk with Akin because he was "so outraged at how quickly Republican leaders have deserted him. After talking with Rep. Akin, I'm even more outraged."

Condemn the ignorance of an adult of the advanced years of Todd Akin, personally, legislatively, and especially serving on a science committee in Congress.

Condemn Todd Akin for accepting the support of a charlatan who advocates a view which is false and which horribly harms women.  Condemn Jack Wilke for being an ass and a fraud and a dangerous extremist.

While I applaud the political operatives, politicians, media and candidates on the right for demanding that Todd Akin step aside, and I applaud them putting their money where their mouths are by removing their contribution to the funding of Todd Akin's candidacy, I also condemn them for denying Akin the opportunity to participate in the Republican convention.  Right or that special variety of right-wing-wrong, Akin was elected as a candidate by the citizens of Missouri.  We can all offer an opinion, and offer or withdraw support, but the decision is theirs.  I have decried the intrusion of outside money and of big money into our elections; I feel it diminishes the contribution of the individual citizen in the jurisdiction of each elected office - from all sides.  But no political party, not right or left, should be able to go so far as to debar an elected candidate from participating in a national convention of the party which endorsed him.  Who the hell is anyone on the RNC to tell Missourians who they can - or can't - send to the national convention?

This sets as dangerous a precedent in political party operation as the views of Todd Akin, and the attempted legislation by Akin and Paul Ryan set for heavy handed oppression of women.

 

Todd Akin ISN'T the ONLY Republican Who Believes Factually Wrong Things about Women, Rape, and Pregnancy

The first time I heard or read the completely false statement that women couldn't become pregnant by rape, as a justification for the assertion that women would lie about being raped to get an abortion was not from Todd Akin. It is not unique to him, it is not unique among Republicans.

We wrote about it here, documenting some of the sources.  Freind circulated his claim that a woman couldn't get pregnant from 'real' rape, way back in 1988.  It has been circulating in the ignorance only/anti-abortion circles for a long, long time.  It had been embraced by the more extreme right throughout the 20th century; it is common in ignorant red states with poor educational standards, and apparently low professional standards.  It is what you get with red states - poor education results, low education funding, religion dominating science (specifically Christianity, either Roman Catholicism or fundamental evangelical versions), and support male dominance over women. These are the same people who want to remove anti-gender discrimination and to remove guarantees of equal pay for equal work for women.

It was said relatively recently by conservative State Senator Chuck Winder, who straight up claimed he thought women would lie about being raped, earlier this year, as a rebuttal to objections regarding forced, medically unnecessary ultrasound as a condition of receiving an abortion.

From the Buzz Feed:

Federal Judge James Leon Holmes made a similar claim back in 1997, and had written a letter in 1980 claiming that concern for rape victims was a red herring because the frequency of women being raped was similar to the frequency of snowfall in Miami.  It complicated his 2003 appointment to the federal bench by George W. Bush.  There was an attempt made to justify his claims about biology under the heading of religion, arguing that by faulting his lack of factual accuracy it was an assault on his religious beliefs.

The inherent assault on women's equality, and reproductive rights, and factual science was ignored.  It was one more instance of belief being given more value and legitimacy by Republicans than the issue of believing something factually verifiable over ideology.

And, appallingly from anyone with a medical degree who ought to know better before being allowed near anyone in a professional capacity, per the Columbus Dispatch (Ohio):

"I think that life begins when the chromosomes of the sperm and egg line up," said Dr. Richard Dobbins, who works in the emergency department at Hardin Memorial Hospital in Kenton.

Dobbins also questioned the need for emergency contraception in rape cases, saying that most women either are not fertile during assault or do not become pregnant because the trauma prompts a hormonal response that prevents ovulation.
The furthest back I had traced this before was a complete misrepresentation of recognized medical journals and other sources by another M.D., John C. Wilke, another anti-abortion nut, who opined more extensively about rape and conception inaccurately, in detail.  I can only wonder if they were educated at some crackpot Christian Medical School with dodgy accreditation like the law school that graduated Michele Bachmann.  Wilke, as of Monday (8/20/'12) was still doubling down on his medical fallacy.

There was similar false statements, circa 1995, made in the North Carolina Legislature, to the Appropriations Committee, by Rep. Henry Aldridge, a dentist by profession, to justify eliminating an abortion fund for poor women.  From the San Francisco Chronicle:

"The facts show that people who are raped -- who are truly raped -- the juices don't flow, the body functions don't work and they don't get pregnant," said Aldridge, a 71-year-old periodontist. "Medical authorities agree that this is a rarity, if ever."

"It's really common for rape victims to be blamed for being raped," said Margaret Henderson, president of the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

"But this is the first time I've heard of rape victims being blamed for becoming pregnant. I am both flabbergasted and offended by this man's remarks."

Aldridge had the floor during the committee meeting as he was trying to apologize for earlier remarks implying that victims of rape or incest are sexually promiscuous.

"I would invite the representative from Pitt to ask any woman who is the victim of rape or incest if she is being sexually promiscuous," Democratic Representative Dan Blue told him at the time.

Later, Aldridge defended his comments.

"To get pregnant, it takes a little cooperation. And there ain't much cooperation in a rape," he said.

A subcommittee had recommended cutting the fund from $1.2 million to $50,000 next year. Abortions would have been limited to cases of rape, incest or pregnancies that put the mother's life at risk.

But I think the instance of someone using this factually false argument that is the most offensive, the most egregious, the most appalling was this one, reported by the New York Times:

During a 1998 Senate campaign in Arkansas, the Republican candidate Dr. Fay Boozman claimed that hormones generated by fear usually prevented rape victims from getting pregnant, according to the doctor’s remarks in a report in The Times that year:

His reasoning: Pregnancy rarely occurs after rape because the stress of the assault triggers a biochemical reaction in the victim that makes conception unlikely. The Senator, who also is an ophthalmologist, said he knew this to be the case from anecdotal information he had picked up over the years and from his own medical residency in the 1970’s at the University of Arkansas Medical Center.

After he lost that election, Dr. Boozman was appointed to run the Arkansas Department of Health by the governor at the time, Mike Huckabee.

Now to be fair, Dr. Boozman DID at some later point, admit that his belief was 'not statistically based', but as wikipedia noted, "Dr. Boozman was also a former medical advisor to a crisis pregnancy center."

Pregnancy centers exist solely to persuade women not to have abortions; as an ophthalmologist, Dr. Boozman would not have been qualified to provide gynecological medical advice to women.  I have to wonder how many women met Dr. Boozman in that crisis pregnancy center believing he was a different kind of doctor.

This is pertinent because the whole premise that women can't get pregnant from rape is part of the larger pattern of deliberate misinformation, and the intentional substitution of faith and ideology for science that is part of the right wing political agenda.

Crisis Pregnancy centers are notorious for providing women false or factually inaccurate medical information. 

I include it here because at issue is not only that the far right, which has become the majority of the current Republican party, appears to be intentionally ill informed on matters of sex and reproduction, but they insist on making their factually false beliefs replace factual knowledge, including in sex education curricula and in reproductive-related law.  This is in significant measure an attempt to make Christianity a state-sponsored religion, part of the effort by the religious right wing to make the U.S. a Christian theocracy, not a democracy.  This represents a war on women, a war against sex, a war against science, but most of all it represents a war on the fundamental premise of the United States not having a state religion.

From Wikipedia:

CPCs that qualify as medical clinics may also provide pregnancy testing, sonograms, and other services; however, the vast majority are not licensed and provide no medical services.^[1] CPCs have been reported to disseminate false medical information, usually but not exclusively about the supposed health risks and mental health risks of abortion.^[11][12]
CPCs are typically run by pro-life Christians according to a conservative Christian philosophy,^[13] and they often operate in affiliation with one of three non-profit organizations: Care Net, Heartbeat International, and Birthright International. There are over 4,000 CPCs in the United States, as compared with well under 750 abortion clinics. Canada has roughly 200 CPCs and about 25 abortion clinics.^[14

At least 20 U.S. states provide funding for CPCs,^[5] and from from 2001 to 2005, 50 CPCs received $30 million in funding from the U.S. federal government.^[1] By 2006, U.S. CPCs had received more than $60 million dollars of federal funding, including some funding earmarked for abstinence-only programs.^[16]

False medical information
Journalists, medical researchers, congressional investigators, prospective CPC clients, and pro-choice advocates have routinely found that CPCs disseminate false medical information.^[12] In a few cases, such information may be based on decades-old studies that have been discredited by more recent research.^[13] In others, CPCs claim an existing scientific consensus in favor of such information.^[1] The information is usually about the supposed health risks of abortion; centers fail to mention that abortion is 11 to 12 times safer than childbirth.^[13][27] Some centers even say that "terminating a pregnancy is far more dangerous than carrying a baby to term", although the opposite is the case.^[11]
One common piece of medical misinformation is the assertion of a link between abortion and breast cancer.^{[12][1][4][11][13][22][27][33][34][35][36][37][38]} One crisis pregnancy center counselor is reported to have told a client that "50 percent of women who have an abortion get breast cancer and 30 percent die within a year of the procedure";^[36] others have claimed a 50% increase,^[1]:8 an 80% increase,^[1]:8,^[11][35] a doubled increase,^[1]:8[37] a quadrupled increase,^[39] or said that a client with breast cancer in her family would certainly get cancer and die if she had an abortion.^[35] Major medical bodies (including the National Cancer Institute^[40]) say that there is no link between abortion and breast cancer.^{[13][22][33][34][35]}
Another is the assertion of a link between abortion and mental health problems. CPC counselors are reported to have conveyed various supposed psychological consequences of abortion, including high rates of depression, "post-abortion syndrome", post-traumatic stress disorder, suicide, substance abuse, sexual and relationship dysfunction, propensity to child abuse, and other emotional problems.^{[1][5][11][13][22][34][35][38][39][41][42][43]} Figures included a 50% chance of long-term emotional problems^[34] or trauma,^[1] nine in ten women suffering "post-abortion syndrome",^[1] and a sevenfold increase in the suicide rate;^[1] one center said that anyone who had had an abortion was certain to experience mental health problems like those suffered by Vietnam veterans.^[1] Neither the American Psychiatric Association nor the American Psychological Association recognizes the existence of "post-abortion syndrome", and an American Psychological Association review of relevant studies found that "abortion is usually psychologically benign."^{[1][22][34][35]}
CPCs may also claim that surgical abortion is a dangerous procedure, with a high risk of perforation or infection.^{[5][13][34][35][37][39][41][43]} One CPC counselor is reported to have told an undercover investigator that a patient was left needing a colostomy bag after her bowel was perforated;^[39] several reports mention that a CPC described or depicted a woman dying as a result of the procedure.^[35][37][44] However, fewer than 0.3% of women who have abortions experience complications that necessitate hospitalization.^[34]
The alleged risk of perforation and infection is also part of the assertion that abortion negatively impacts future childbearing, by increasing the risk of infertility, miscarriages, complications, ectopic pregnancy, or fetal health problems.^{[1][11][13][34][35][38][39][41][42][43]} One center claimed that there was a one in four chance of not being able to carry another pregnancy.^[43] These claims are not supported by medical data.^[1][34][43]
Besides false information about health risks of abortion, CPCs have also been found to disseminate misinformation about birth control methods, in particular the idea that contraception and condoms do not work or have harmful effects.^{[13][21][22][34][35][39][44]} Some counselors said that "all condoms are defective and have slots and holes in them"^[13] or that they fail "something like 40 percent of the time."^[22] Other centers said that condoms were permeable to HIV or other diseases,^[21] or that hormonal contraceptives had abortifacient effects and did long-term harm to women's health, such as causing infertility and cancer,^[34][35] while one said that condoms caused cancer.^[39]
Other false information may concern the methodology of pregnancy tests,^[44] the advisability of STI testing on pregnant women,^[35] the comparative risk, availability, and advisability of abortion at different stages of pregnancy,^{[37][39][43][45]} descriptions of female anatomy,^[43] the rate of postpartum depression among women who carry to term,^[1] the progression of fetal development,^[37][39] fetal pain,^[37] the possibility of getting pregnant from rape,^[39] the progression of pregnancy,^[21] and the number of pregnancies that end in natural miscarriages.^[21]
Pro-choice organizations like Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Federation, and Choice Ireland have criticized CPCs' dissemination of false medical information.^[4][45][46] Care Net denounces "any form of deception in its corporate advertising or individual conversations with its clients", though they also say of their promotion of an abortion–breast cancer link that their "role is clearly to include this possible risk when [they] educate clients about all the risks of abortions."^[27]

This is in the larger context this year of efforts by the right in trying to redefine rape to eliminate statutory rape, or rape where the victim is drugged by date-rape drugs, or otherwise rendered incapable of giving consent.  The attempt was to only define rape if it was violent enough, not if it was simply under threat of violence or coercion of immediate personal harm, or other fear.  Rape should be defined as sex without consent, and against the wishes of one of the parties.  (Although this IS true, sort of, of ducks being able to avoid conception from some kinds of forced sexual penetration in certain select species of waterfowl, but it has to do with an adaptation of vaginal position, and length, not hormones or secretions.)

This is in the larger context of the right to eliminate both contraception and abortion rights and to gut health care for women, which drastically erodes women's capacity to determine their own lives and to be independent human beings. It is reflected as well in the failures of abstinence only sex education that provides false and inaccurate information on pregnancy, and which provides ignorance in place of education.  It is part of an attack on women and an attempt to regress human sexuality back to the darkest of the dark ages.

Specifically, in addressing the issue of rape, as if some rape is more acceptable than others, the New York Times noted:

On Monday, Mr. Akin appeared on Mike Huckabee’s radio program and said, “I was talking about forcible rape.” As Slate blogger David Weigel explains, the use of that term in a bill introduced by House Republicans last year — and the apparent effort to create tiers of rape in federal law — provoked controversy. While the term was eventually dropped from the legislation, Mr. Akin, and Representative Paul Ryan, were among the co-sponsors of the original bill.

What this really amounts to is an attempt to minimize the crime of rape, to shift the blame and responsibility for rape from men to women, and to try to justify denying abortions to women who have been raped.  There are some 32,000 rapes a year that result in pregnancy, according to the CDC; and because rape is so under-reported, the number is certainly much higher.