Dr. John Willke
When Todd Akin first scoffed at the notion that rape victims can get pregnant, he defended himself by pointing to the medical judgment of someone named Dr. John Willke, former president of the National Right to Life Committee, who has been pushing this argument for many years.
Indeed, just this week, Willke told the New York Times rapists don't impregnate their victims because, "This is a traumatic thing -- she's, shall we say, she's uptight. 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."
Biologically, this is deeply stupid and wholly rejected by physicians, but politically, it's also become rather important -- and not just because of Akin.
As Rachel noted on the show, Willke has also been a Mitt Romney ally and campaign surrogate. Josh Marshall had this item last night.
The main exponent of Todd Akin's theory that rape victims don't get pregnant ... claims that he got a private meeting with Mitt Romney as recently as late last year.
The claim comes in an article just out from The Daily Telegraph (for what it's worth, it's the same pub and reporter who wrote the 'Anglo-Saxon' piece a few weeks ago which provided the inglorious kick off to Romney's European tour). As reporter Jon Swaine explains, Willke was an official surrogate for Romney back in 2008. Willke claims that he got a private meeting with Romney as recently late last year and told Willke "we agree on almost everything" about the pro-life cause.
To reiterate something Rachel mentioned last night, I generally think it's wise to take reports on U.S. politics from U.K. newspapers with a grain of salt, but in this case, we're dealing with easily-checkable claims, some of which we already know to be true. Willke really was, for example, a Romney campaign surrogate during his most recent campaign.
So, did Romney meet with Willke in October as he claims? And if so, why? The same Telegraph article goes on to say Willke also met with Paul Ryan "several times." What did the two chat about?
For its part, it'd be easy for Team Romney to simply deny the meetings ever took place, but at this point, the campaign is simply not commenting, which only makes this more interesting.
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Any prescriptions for spastic tubes in the ears of true believers and their followers? A viagra that increases blood flow to the brain?
Just realized that these idiots confuse orgasm with pregnancy. When a woman is uptight she wont orgasm but may get pregnant.
The medieval notion [1] was that there was a sort of mirror symmetry between male and female sexual anatomy and physiology. The penis (outie) and vagina (innie), the testes and uterus, etc. Conception requires, goes the thought, that both male and female orgasm and their "juices flow" together to produce offspring. No orgasm, no baby.
This may also be the origin of the "you can't get pregnant the first time" myth, since it's relatively rare for women to orgasm without some practice.
Now, how the 13th century allowed for the kind of ignorance is another matter, given the nearly universal practice of gang rape by raiding troops and such. Like today, it must have taken some serious effort.
[1] Like the rest of Willke's nonsense, this doesn't deserve to be called a "theory" although, being falsifiable, it's technically a "hypothesis."
The very idea that a woman cannot get pregnant via rape is flatly medieval. The earliest mention seems to come from 1290:
Selden, John, ed. Fleta, seu Commentarius Juris Anglicani sic Nuncupatus: sub Edwardo Rege Primo. London: S.R. Prostant. 1685.
I'm personally interested in studying the middle ages, but I absolutely do not want to LIVE there!
This is exactly the position taken by Missouri Representative Todd Akin (R-Dumb@!$%#istan):
This is bull@!$%#. In fact, science has shown that acute stress may actually TRIGGER ovulation!
RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, has compiled some horrifying statistics about rape:
Wait, you mean women don't, um, practice? Huh. I for one, have been practicing for years (although, of course, I am a Penis-American)!
When, on occasion, my skills, such as they are, have been complimented by the women I've known, I've often fallen back on the classic line of Woody Allen's:
"I practice a lot when I'm alone."
Vulture/Voucher 2012
Proving Two Rights DO Make a Wrong!
;-)
No, snowbird, they didn't confuse anything. They repeated a falsehood because it made their monstrous "No Exceptions" and "Personhood" abominations sound less monstrous and abominable. The Teahaddists turned on Akin because he outed them.
Todd Akin, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan actually believe these terrible things, and are not afraid tio force them on America if they are given power. The absurd and scientifically idiotic point lof view espoused by Rep., Akin is not some random blurb from an unhinged individual. This is the core principle of the modern GOP, infiltrated by extreme elements of the Tea Party and made to lurch far to the right of where the party was just a few years ago. Paul Ryan believes the exact same thing as Todd Akin, gleefully joining Akin in sponsoring legislation in the United States Congress that would legislate the idiocy of what Akin said on TV as a mandate against every woman in America. Romney and Ryan are standing right beside Todd Akin on this. - principled progressive
Do they believe this stuff? Really?
When do men concern themselves with the female body otherwise? How many men out there take any interest in hearing about, let alone discussing, female cycles or PMS or hot flashes? Yet, they feel qualified to legislate over and issue (uneducated) opinions about women from clean work spaces where uterine realities are not allowed.
Why? Logically, the answer is the continual assuaging of that particular section of people who have ingrained Pavlovian responses to these issues and keep both the votes and the tithes coming in their disingenuous battles for some vacuous Creator who apparently designed the female body without defense against either rape or unwanted pregnancy.
These men don't care about women's bodies, they care about the affirmation they recieve pontificating on these issues. If they didn't get affirmation, they'd be off harping on something or someone else.
It's always been my personal belief that the reason so many men get so freaking worked up about abortion and women's uterus' (uteri?) is that they don't themselves have one so they feel like passengers in the "giving of life" miracle. These types of men demand/need/crave ultimate power and not being able to birth babies makes them NUTS. So, they must gain superpower control of those who can birth babies. They don't care a whit in my opinion about the babies, just the CONTROL.
Probably. It's much more comfortable to screw people over when you actually believe your excuses than when you are knowingly doing evil.
It seems they are all pro-life. A meeting between like minds is hardly a conspiracy.
On the other hand, if you want to represent it as such - Conservatives will happily call Obama's associations with communists, domestic terrorists, and assorted other characters, a conspiracy too.
Oh Shooter, they have been doing that since 2009. You really need to get out of that 1950's time warp you are in. Drag the Republican's out with you too.
http://moelane.com/2012/06/09/troll-hunting-101/
Don't forget to change your sheets once in a while, Shooter, they must be getting stiff as boards by now.
Shooter - please take your candidates and jump into the time machine and head back to the 1950's or even further back if you would prefer and allow the rest of us to live peaceably and enjoy the 21st Century.
I confess that I'm hardly shocked. This is what happens when you get theology mixed up in policy: doctrine trumps facts every time. I was a lot less dangerous in the Bronze Age, but the way we're headed we'll be back to designing ships according to Noah's design because, after all, that must be perfect given that it was handed down from God.
And we all know that witches can't drown.
Sheesh Shoot, 'fk you paling around with the libs here?
The Univ. of Cincinnati should be ashamed of itself for giving this quack an MD in 1948.
Republican "science" concerning "Ladyparts" is taught in the fifth grade. On the playground. By Freddie, who got is information from an unimpeachable source- his older brother.
Hey now, we shouldn't question the credentials of Freddie's older brother.
He did get his facts from a very reputable source: A 1975 Penthouse Forum their dad hid in the garage.
Hey! I never taught nobody nothin'!
Here's the thing, Steve. You need to be able to point to current biology and gynecology, and that requires current practitioners and researchers, and not just but small-town practitioners, and have them going out and actively disprove this nonsense, in op-eds, in the bigger state papers. High-end columns in the Times and in WSJ (as if). These people need to educate, but see --- there's the beauty of this trick: it takes a minute to make an assertion it takes an hour to disprove. When people are "telling" their believers "what is," the "enemy" cannot, in any way cause to sway in their direction the truth; it is not "fact" to these people, no matter how true, it is merely "their truth."
I am actually worried about the situation these men's <i>wives</i> must be in, what mental state or tolerance for this bullcrap. None of the national protagonists for this ridiculous "no-pregs rape" idea are, in fact, women (that I know of, and if so, they are FAR outweighed by the old white men and their male children).
More puerile nonsence. Cue the national outcry of reasonable voices in 3...2...1... Sound of crickets.
I think Rachel's take on this junk science is on point. Most pro-lifers are decent people. They truly believe in this stuff. Most of them, however, are very naive. They don't have much experience with the real world, at least the real world outside their nice white suburban neighborhoods. They really want a world where good is rewarded and evil is punished--a world where they can feel safe in the smugness of their own untested ideas. Pregnancy caused by rape introduces a moral dilemma into the black and white world view neatly constructed by their politicial/religious leaders--men like Todd Akin. A lot of the rank and file might question the rightness and wrongness of abortion if they actually had to think about the impact of both rape and unwanted pregnancy on the lives of the people involved. Dr. John Willke's untested assertion gives Todd Akin and Paul Ryan something to tell their trusting and naive followers when they ask an uncomfortable question. I am sure if you were to spend time in the pro-life movement, Willke's unfounded assertion was, until last weekend, pretty close to an unspoken universally held belief.
Most excellent, Sir!
How many of them have "walked a mile in another man's shoes?"
The problem is, these "decent people" - so full of moral certainty and good intentions - are 'leaders' in our society, they hold positions of authority- in government, in business, in school board positions...and more and more their dangerously wrong viewpoint is forced into 'policy'...look at the outrageously high rates of teen pregnancy in Bible-Belt states - where 'true believers' insist on abstinance-only sex ed....because, after all, 'nice' boys and girls don't need to know how those 'things' work, they merely need to say 'no'. Evidence of the failure of such policy is undeniable...thousands of 'nice' girls drop out of school due to unplanned pregnancy (thinking "I was scared/I didn't enjoy it"- how could this happen?!) Domestic violence is epidemic, access to prenatal care almost non-existent, this nation's maternal death rate is shockingly and disgracefully high. Tens of thousands of our young people 'sentenced' to lives of struggle and poverty. I don't want to hear how 'decent' or 'good' these celebrators of ignorance are...they are dangerous.
Rose, you forgot to mention that UTAH is #1 in pornography consumption.
Hypocrisy 101 is a required course at Brigham Young.
Or waddled a mile in a 8th-month pregnant girl's mu-mu?
What about the legal aspect of this?
How long before a defense attorney gets up in open court and proclaims "Well
your honor, since the alleged victim became pregnant as a result of the encounter,
obviously her tubes were not spastic and therefore I humbly submit that she
must not have put up too much resistance and thereby renders this encounter consensual”.?
Very scarey!
The Onion beat you to it.
http://www.theonion.com/ articles/pregnant-woman-relieved-to-learn-her-rape-was-ille,29258/
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn Romney has enthusiastically opposed abortion rights to every anti-choice zealot. When Mike Huckabee asked him if he would support a "Human Life Amendment", Romney practically shouted “ABSOLUTELY”. The Romney doctrine is simple - the end justifies the means. The man has no shame.
Congressman Akin's initial "apology" stresses the fact that he used the "wrong word" in describing why women would not get pregnant if raped. He used the phrase "legitimate rape", when what he probably meant to say was "forcible rape", a term that has been used repeatedly by himself and Cong. Ryan and others in anti-abortion legislation. I have not heard him say what word he was searching for probably because to do so would focus more attention on his past record as well as Cong. Ryan's in this regard.
I generally think it's wise to take reports on U.S. politics from U.K. newspapers with a grain of salt,...
I generally think it's wise to take reports on U.S. politics from U.S. newspapers with a grain of salt.
I was surprised to hear the Telegraph talked about in this way. It is a repected broadsheet, along with the Times, Guardian and Independant. It isn't the Daily Mail or the Sun.
They only critisism regularly leveled at the Telegraph is that it is the Tory (conservative) paper. It has a right wing bias. Surely that make's it's comments on this occasion more valid?
I still cannot believe that there is no room for faith and science. Isn't it easier to believe, if science disproves your faith, that the "people" who wrote it got it wrong, that they worked off a different calendar or something? Why does it have to be one or the other? These men prove their ignorance more and more each day and yet people are still happy with them. They need to do what is best for their constituents. This is not just what they feel is best.
Whatever you may think of Marx as an economist or historian, he nailed it as a religious commentator; it's an OPIATE, narcotizing ones anxieties about an ambiguous and scary world. It's not a search for truth Samm, it's a search for tranquility. What does a substance-dependant person do when truth or reality ramps up his/her anxiety? They abuse more of the substance, and if it's not available, they'll rob and kill to get it, but they never try to come to terms with the reality that scares them.
I am of course fascinated by the almost super-human level of damage control carried out by the various Organs of the Right in the Todd Akin matter. Whether Todd Akin stays or goes, he has already been helped out of this mess just about as much as any group of human beings can help out a lone, helplessly flailing member of their team.
When the first 'apology' came out (where he said he 'misspoke'), I was scratching my head a bit. I mean, Mr. Akin had commented at length on the matter of what I'll abbreviate a bit and call "legitimate rape". He didn't misspeak. You don't 'misspeak' when it takes you several breaths to get it all said. But then I came to appreciate the subtle bait and switch his allies had carried out -- and under everybody's nose, too.
Suddenly the discussion was no longer about a clueless boob discoursing at length on biological matters about which most of us gained a better understanding as soon as we got out of our first Sex-Ed class. Suddenly, the discussion -- and the apology -- was about the use of the word 'legitimate'. By narrowing the focus of the apology, by refusing even to recognize that he had betrayed an appalling ignorance (as well as an embarrassing arrogance) in matters concerning the female body, by repeatedly saying that the mistake was a matter of just “one word in one sentence on one day”, Todd Akin managed to narrow the focus of the discussion surrounding the apology as well.
Just to be clear, the use of the word "legitimate" in conjunction with the word "rape" is an unfortunate mistake. It seems obvious to me from listening to the tape that Mr. Akin was trying to create an antonym for 'date rape' (which I would venture to say he does not consider a "legitimate" form of rape -- whatever you or I may think on the matter), and placed his foot squarely where it should never have gone. Had that been the end of the matter, Mr. Akin would have been little more than yet another old white man (I've seen his photo, you see) having an opinion about something he's never really earned the right to have an opinion about, and not interested in listening to the opinions of others who might be better informed, or better able to speak from experience (i.e., women).
But it is one thing to have a lack of expertise in a subject. It is quite another to parade one's ignorance, proudly and with gusto, to spout pseudo-scientific nonsense as though it were gospel, to create at a stroke a whole set of scientific results by the mere act of wishing them to be true.
And the others in the studio with him should not be exempted here. Not one person in that comfortable little get-together where Mr. Akin felt sufficiently at ease to share some of the more outré results of his personal research chose to contradict him, or question him, or even express a bit of surprise. And if no person of principle could be found in that little gathering to stand up and say, no, here you are egregiously misinformed, here you have strayed into the realm of fantasy, here you have severed your connections with the world the rest of us are familiar with, then how does this group different from, say, a slightly different group in Tehran? Surely they are also insulated from the real world by comfortable notions of their own. In a democracy, when do we say no, sorry, you're just not ready to go into government? When do we say, pick a different field, pick something safer. Maybe welder? Tailor? Well, okay, maybe not those. When do we say, no, the leash stays on, you're just not ready yet to lead an adult life?
Our politicians routinely screen themselves off from sights or sounds that might threaten their comfortable notions. For example, Paul Ryan (who has some comfortable notions of his own) is not 'courageous' for daring to speak of ending Medicare as we know it (although. like any good son, he makes sure his mother -- who is 78 -- will not be one of the ones to suffer the consequences of his ideas), because he lives surrounded by sycophants who applaud on command. When Mitt Romney must apologize or do damage control after yet another gaffe, he 'courageously' picks Fox News to bare his soul. The idea that Fox News makes you stupid appears not to even approximate the truth of the matter. This is not the 'stupid' of the star fullback in high school who didn't really 'get' the assignment. Mr. Akin has broken ground on an entirely new province of stupid, and -- credit where credit is due -- however stupid his original statements, the damage control has been masterful.
"Legitimate" rape refers to conquering armies, and is usually accompanied by "pillage".
(For those lacking a sarcasm meter, the above is 'snark')
When will voters come to realize the Republican party is a spastic tube?
When someone on your show says ryan is a fiscal concervative - I hope you will hit them right between the eyes with the truth - he has voted for everything on and off budget - he is NO fical conservative and you shouldn't let those who claim he is, off the hook. Love your show - watch you every nite. Cheers Vic
The radical right wing that is the current GOP, by all appearances, believes that women should be enslaved to the mere potential of a fetus. I must be a deviant in believing that a fully formed individual should have a greater say in her life and health than something that, until the 2nd trimester at least, is only the potential for a human life.
when people lose touch with reality...politics & religion....
I thought this post was about POLITICIANS WHO REFSE TO ANSWER SIMPLE QUESTIONS ABOUT THEMSELVES. In last night's show, they (inter alia, Paul Ryan) chanted stupid mantras over and over again, rather than answer a simple question. Remember this:
1- People only have a right to remain silent when they are criminal suspects. In all other cases, their very silence may be used against them. When they're politicians, it should be used against them.
2 - When someone spews meaningless verbiage when they're asked a question, they may have misunderstood the question. HOWEVER, when you keep repeating the question, and they keep spewing meaningless verbiage, it means both of two things: (a) they're afraid to answer the question truthfully, and (b) they want to deceive everyone by appearing to answer the question when they're actually refusing to answer the question. WE SHOULD NEVER LET CANDIDATES OR ELECTED OFFICIALS GET AWAY WITH THIS.
I don't see what the excitement is all about, I have always viewed the anti-abortion folks as religious fanatics whose dogma results in the impairment of female economic equality. This has been the Republican position for decades.
This doctor looks like he may be prescribing cocaine for depression and calling disease "the vapors" and bloodletting for a cure.
Or for himself.
sounds like we have a sperm gate here!