Associated Press
Democrats are eager to tie Todd Akin's odious remarks on rape to the larger Republican Party, and to make this easier, they'll need the GOP to formally adopt Akin's ideas and for some Republicans to defend his comments.
The first step is nearly complete, and the second got a boost from Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa).
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."
As Evan McMorris-Santoro noted, "A 1996 review by the Guttmacher Institute found 'at least half of all babies born to minor women are fathered by adult men.'"
And who's Steve King? He's the guy who was recently bragging about all the policy influence he'd have in a Romney/Ryan administration.
Note, in context, King was trying on Monday to defend a bill called the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," which King cosponsored along with Todd Akin and vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan. And the more that generates attention, the worse it is for the Republicans' national ambitions.
To briefly recap, while existing law already restricts public funding for abortions, there are exceptions for impregnated rape victims. This bill, one of the first considered by House Republicans in this Congress (H.R. 3), sought to limit what can legally be considered "rape."
Specifically, Republican proponents said the exception would only apply to "forcible" rape. If the law had passed, for example, a 13-year-old girl who was impregnated by a 24-year-old man would not be able to use Medicaid funds to terminate the pregnancy, unless she could prove she'd been "forcibly" raped.
Apparently, as part of the exhaustive legislative research Steve King did before cosponsoring the legislation, he couldn't find a single instance of a minor being impregnated by an adult, so had no qualms joining Akin and Paul Ryan in trying to redefine rape in this context.
So, Team Romney, any thoughts on Steve King's latest gem?
Update: King believes he was taken out of context, but I don't think the context helps. The question from the local CBS affiliate refers to statutory rape involving a pregnant 12 year-old, and the congressman says he's not familiar with such a scenario.
REPORTER: "You support the 'No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,' that would provide federal funding for abortions to a person that has been forcibly raped. But what if someone isn't forcibly raped, and for example, a 12 year old, who, you know, gets pregnant, should she have to bring this baby to a full term?"
KING: "Well I just haven't heard of that being a circumstance that's been brought to me in any personal way, and I'd be open to discussion about that subject matter.
"Generally speaking it's this, that there are millions of abortions in this country every year and millions of them are paid for, at least in part, by taxpayers.
"I think it's immoral for us to compel conscientious objecting taxpayers to fund abortion to the-through the federal government, or any other government for that matter.
"So that's my stand, and if there are exceptions there then bring me those exceptions, let's talk about it. And in the meantime it's wrong for us to compel pro-life people to pay taxes to fund abortion. Here's an example, Planned Parenthood in Iowa had, they did 55 hundred abortions in Iowa, that's by their own account, without a single referral for adoption. It's an industry for them, it's not compassionate, the thing that they are doing."
For the record, Planned Parenthood does not terminate pregnancies with public funds.
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Ya gotta hand it to King - he's not just an occasional embarrassment to Iowa. He's a consistent embarrassment.
So would the GOP machine ask Mr.King to resign or not run for congress again as they're trying to kick Mr. akin from his race?
If they don't,it'll signify a dramatic thirst for power and lack of decency by a major party.
You would think they would, but I have my doubts. Instead, the RNC is probably issuing a memo to all GOP incumbents and candidates: "Do NOT discuss this matter any further with anybody."
This is a Repub strategy isn't it? Say something bizarre, claim your words were "twisted" after the outcry, then get a gig on Faux news to tell what you really meant. Uh-huh, I'm sure of it.
Steve,
I think you left the word "tie" out of your lead sentence.
Gee, Iowans must be as proud of their representative as Missourians are of Mr. Akin. No embarrassment and they say it with a straight face.....
Hopefully Christie Vilsack can beat King in November. But western Iowa is pretty bloody red. Almost as stupid as Missourians. King probably feels pretty safe there, even with idiocy like this.
Well if Christie Vilsack would use it to her advantage,,,,
She was quoted at Salon saying
Christie Vilsack, King’s Democratic opponent, told Salon in an interview this morning that King “should have condemned” and “should have distanced himself from” Akin. “I get friendship. It’s really important to stand by your friends, regardless of what they do or say, and he can do that privately, but publicly, he needs to make it very clear what his thoughts are on these very important issues,”
WTF? She should have gone up one side and down the other asking him how you get elected with no women's votes.
Is this is how she campaigns against one of the stupidest members of congress she doesn't deserve to win.
There's a reason they call it "Iowa nice." Folks there can decode it.
That's why I say: NBC, go interview some rapists who've impregnated some of their victims. If the Repubs won't take women's words for it, then perhaps some unrepentant creep boasting from a prison cell might get their attention.
(smacks forehead)
Holy crap, I've just realized MSNBC might already have applicable footage, from its Lockup shows!
Let's hope a lot more of these idiots come out with similar statements. That helps the Dems, particularly in some House districts and a couple of Senate races. If Dems can get majorities in both houses, I can see the end of filibusters and holds in the next session. Dems cannot afford to allow more Republican obstructions or the Dems will lose the midterms again.
Wow I really didn't think we were gonna 'go there'...so this show not only that they don't do their research and inform themselves by the 'voices in their heads' but that the little women really DON'T matter cuz no one with a vagina can vote for them.
and you left out he part of the transcript where King praises Akin as a good decent family man. i will give King this: he boldly goes where most politicians, even Akin, whimper away from. hopefully this time it will cost him his seat (although if everything up to and including last week's pro-dog-fighting stance hasn't done it, i'm not sure anything will.)
The GOP openly pretend to protect the fetus until it is old enough to cost the taxpayer a dime. It is damn inconvenient that American women are not stupid enough to believe the hypocrisy. Since the egg belongs to the woman, no one has a right to tell her how to handle her responsibility. If someone has the audacity to usurp that responsibility, it is only fitting that the usurper assumes complete responsibility for the consequences of their audacity. All poor children should be in Tampa for photo-ops with their alleged protectors, the compassionate GOP.
With the Ryan pick, Romney's crypto-moderate mask fell away. The fact that Ryan proposed vouchers for Medicare, cutting education and Pell Grants, et al, and that he co-sponosred Akin's personhood amendment and his bill on redefining rape tells the tale. The moderate-maybe mask can't be put back on.
Steve King says he's a 'close' friend of Paul Ryan and will have influence in the WH.
"King told an Iowa reporter he's never heard of a child getting pregnant from statutory rape or incest."
I haven't heard of any children getting pregnant either, of course I could be misguided.
As a former child protective specialist with NYC's Administration for Children's Services, I can attest to many pregnancies from statutory rape which these clowns want to call "consensual rape". Children below the age of consent can not give consent.
There are also a legion of incest cases. Usually the child is a sex slave of the abuser.
It astounds me that there just isn't much appreciation of what actually goes on in life.
Statistics I saw on MSNBC:
5% of rapes result in pregnancy,-32,000 pregnancies per year.
I guess those 32K gals were not really raped.
Probably were not 'legitimate' rapes or they would not have gotten pregnant. /snark
The republicans don't see the irony. These guys are quoting erroneous medical information, and yet, the republicans are going to allow these kooks to help save medicare!
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How dare any man define, or qualify, rape. Only a woman knows if she has been raped. Isn't it a shame that we have to tell our daughters, that if they are raped, they had better scratch the heck out of the rapist, risking their lives, so that they have "proof" that they were actually (forcibly) raped?
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These idiot men are telling me that if my 23 year old, beautiful, professional, daughter is raped, and that rape leads to her being pregnant; that she can't abort the pregnancy?
And these are the medical professionals that the republicans are turning medicare over to?
"These guys" have passed laws that require physicians LIE to their patients -- only women patieants, of course -- about a fictious causality between breast cancer or suicide and abortion.
"These guys" have passed laws that require a woman have a wand stuck in her vagina against her will, even if her doctor says it risks her health, before she can have a perfectly legal abortion. Oh, and she has to pay for it too.
"These guys" have names like Romney and Ryan.
The wantonly stupid will out..........sunshine is always the best disinfectant.......we need a chart of the stupid.......is that possible ?
not enough wall space
Perhaps the children King never heard of getting pregnant from rape or incest are those under 8-10yrs olds, not yet menstruating, and thus incapable of getting pregnant? Because I went to school with a girl who gave birth to a child at not-quite-12, and whose 19yo brother suddenly went away to a "boarding school abroad".
Here's a list of reported pregnancies carried by girls under the age of 12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_youngest_birth_mothers
I know it's not the most reliable of sources, but the list is overwhelming. And these are reported cases that resulted in deliveries, not a complete accounting of rates of children getting pregnant. My husband (an OB/GYN) has seen many patients under the age of 12 with pregnancies; some had not ever menstruated, and the youngest was 8 (a victim of incest).
If Akin stays in his senate race, he is now less likely to be elected. Conversely, if Akin quits under GOP pressure, it will predictably serve to disillusion and alienate Evangelicals from the GOP. Therefore, whether or not Akin quits or stays in the race, it's ok for Democrats. Gobama 2012!
Breaking news: Akin vows to stay in the race "for the good of the country." What a noble patriot.
Yes, so kind of him to grant Democrats an easy win.
There is no bottom to their ignorance. I have a friend who writes political satire and he says that after this week, there is no way he can continue because as imaginative as he is, he can't get ahead of them, and the worst thing he can think of turns out to be the next thing they'll say in all seriousness.
King is beyond belief. I thought he was over the cliff with his statements about the abuse of animals and public support of dog fighting, but this really "takes the cake." A public celebration of ignorance that is truly limitless.
The whole problem with this wacko ideas is that the teapubs believe what they are saying. They think women "like" rough sex and therefore, women "want" to be raped and even if they say no, they mean yes and they enjoy it. These teapubs ideas are like getting your sex education from high school boys that say if you have sex standing up you won't get pregnant and all the other silly things they repeat until they believe the fantasy.
It's time the little high school boys got sent home until they get some education in basic biology and hopefully some common sense will work its way through. The adults need to be in charge for a change. Thirty years of uneducated high school boys has been more than enough for me.
This is conservatism in a nutshell, "If it didn't happen to anyone I know, it can't possibly be real." No empathy, no ability to imagine that anyone lives in different circumstances than themselves except by choice.
go Akin go!
lol
This is the same guy who said that kidnapping a 13yo girl, raping her, taking her across state lines, forcing her to have an abortion and then dropping her off back at the playground was not against the law.
Do I sound pissed in these posts??? Enough is enough!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sick of this debate....everyone needs to read this Letter to a Christian Nation.
“The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics.”
― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
“A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 c
ells in the brain of a fly. The human embryos that are destroyed in stem-cell research do not have brains, or even neurons. Consequently, there is no reason to believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all. It is worth remembered, in this context, that when a person's brain has died, we currently deem it acceptable to harvest his organs (provided he has donated them for this purpose) and bury him in the ground. If it is acceptable to treat a person whose brain has died as something less than a human being, it should be acceptable to treat a blastocyst as such. If you are concerned about suffering in this universe, killing a fly should present you with greater moral difficulties than killing a human blastocyst.
Perhaps you think that the crucial difference between a fly and a human blastocyst is to be found in the latter's potential to become a fully developed human being. But almost every cell in your body is a potential human being, given our recent advances in genetic engineering. Every time you scratch your nose, you have committed a Holocaust of potential human beings. (30)”
― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
Akins is on the science committee, Bachmann on the intelligence committee. Who says the GOP don't have a sense of humor, twisted though it be? The only plausible committee they all should be on is the screw the 99% committee.
Perhaps a connection between the research departments backing up King and Niall Ferguson?
So King claims he's never heard of a child getting pregnant from rape or incest. Therefore it could NEVER have happened to anyone! Is King competing with Akin to see who's more ignorant? We know the man does love media attention. Is this a ploy on his part to get it? The fools just don't stop, no matter what.