It's not unreasonable to wonder whether Todd Akin is some kind of liberal performance artist, making a statement about the absurdities of modern conservatism.
In this clip, first reported yesterday by Slate's Amanda Marcotte, Akin begins by equating abortion with slavery and terrorism, before arguing that medical professionals who terminate pregnancies are dirty criminals. "You find that along with the culture of death go all kinds of other law-breaking: not following good sanitary procedure, giving abortions to women who are not actually pregnant, cheating on taxes, all these kinds of things," Akin said.
Now, I haven't seen any evidence that doctors who perform abortions cheat on their taxes and oversee unsanitary medical facilities. I have a hunch Akin was making this up, but let's put that aside.
The more meaningful problem here is that Akin believes some doctors are "giving abortions to women who are not actually pregnant." I don't know what that means. I'd like to, but I don't.
Indeed, while I don't claim to have a background in medicine, I have a rudimentary understanding of Biology 101. I know, for example, that women who are impregnated by rapists don't have magical abilities to "shut that whole thing down." I also know that women who aren't actually pregnant don't -- and can't -- get abortions.
Did I mention that House Republicans made Akin a member of the House Science Committee?
For context, let's also not forget that this is the same Republican Senate candidate who believes wage discrimination against women in the workplace should be legal, and considers himself an arbiter of who is and isn't "ladylike."
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He forgot to mention teh sheep.
Please, can we require an IQ test for people who run for office? Seriously. We require lawyers to pass the bar; doctors to pass boards. Even insurance salesmen and realtors have to pass tests to get licensed. Why not the people we entrust to run the country?
Because idiots are entitled to representation too. Unfortunately, they are overrepresented in Congress.
Akin is a prime example of how wrong our mental health system has gone. And the people that vote for him, well they're just low-information, religuluous sheeple that don't actually understand what he's saying either.
His district has the representration it deserves. It's the voters who need IQ tests.
Cheating on taxes? Really?!? Isn't this the GOP platform in a nutshell?
He also believes that student loans are third stage cancer and that medicare is unconstitutional.
I would imagine he means falsifying results of pregnancy tests and then pretending to abort pregnancies that aren't actually there. I remember reading a story back in the 70s about a clinic that did this; they were busted when they reported that a urine sample tested positive for pregnancy, not knowing that it came from a man. This could well be an urban legend, but in any case it's an oldie but a goodie.
Right, I figured that's what he meant, and it's theoretically possible, but of course Akin has no evidence at all that this has happened.
My first thought was that the same technique -- dilation and curettage -- that is used for some abortions is also used for "scraping out" uterine tumors. That way you get what most people think of as abortion, without being actually pregnant (indeed, those tumors prevent pregnancy). But I suspect your explanation is the more likely one; I doubt Akin has even heard of the other. Or, if he's heard of it, he'd not retain it in his memory; far too icky.
Well, I know that when my period is a few hours late, I run out for a quick abortion, so that's probably what he's talking about. Just because I'm not pregnant is no reason not to get in on that action. While I'm there, I get my vagina detailed -- last august I got some flames on my vulva, and earlier this year they put racing stripes in my birth canal. Pretty awesome!
I'm told that if I go in next month for an abortion when I'm not actually pregnant, they can give me a late-term non-abortion for the same price as a regular non-abortion. And if I go on coupon tuesdays, a friend can have her non-abortion for free! Flirtinis all around!
@Mighty Ponygirl...that was the funniest thing I have read in a long, long time. :)
Mighty Ponygirl , you are awesome lmao , now we just need you to get up in front of the the redneckistan gop in the u s congress and read that to them!!!!
alas, politics and irony/sarcasm don't mix well. I sort of... already know this first-hand. :o
What's most disconcerting about this kind of comedy is the tragedy that lies behind it: the virulant anti-Democrat at any cost, anti-feminist, anti-Obama at every turn political environment that will support Akin. His constituency isn't really all that uninformed (they hear and read all the same reports as do the rest of us), but he's their last, best, old white male candidate. Sho 'nuf!!
That's quite a video. And in the context of things un-American, there was quite a lot said there, although not in the way he intended or is capable of understanding.
What a tool. Someday we'll look back at this period of American History and wonder, how the hell did a misogynist fool like that ever get elected?
Sorry , but we have had these tools in america from day one , we either out flank them , or they will out flank us
He is just giving us a glimpse of the valuable information that some folks pass around on the internet. Probably he should be banned from using the internet as he must be addicted to unreliable sources. Alternatively, Missouri voters could decide that he doesn't need to be in public office. Let's hope!!
So the terrorists are trying to use fear to keep us from using our conscience in our pursuit of freedom. Please explain how is blowing up abortion clinics and threatening murder charges against women and their doctors, killing doctors and humiliating and penetrating women against their will is not terrorism through the use of fear. Explain how denying birth control to third-world women who have to watch millions of their children die of starvation and disease each year is moral. A very warm place in hell awaits hypocrites like Akin.
"...giving abortions to women who are not actually pregnant..."
Because if there's one thing wimminz love, it's getting abortions.
Akin flunked reality 101.
Akin is not "just making this up." He's dead wrong, but he is repeating memes that have been floating around the Radical Right for years.
Just as was the case with Akin's "if you're raped, you can't get pregnant--unless you really wanted it" idea, we are here getting a glimpse into the parallel universe occupied by the Radical Right. Via the Mighty Google, I have dug up that radical pro-lifers love to tell each other than abortion providers are greedy pigs who will gleefully operate on any woman, pregnant or not, just to make money. The pro-choice website RH Reality Check has a brief discussion of this issue (Robin Marty, "'Abortions on Women Who Aren't Pregnant' Common Trope of Anti-Abortion Movement"). Marty quotes a Missouri legislative analysis published in 2005 (in connection with a mandatory ultrasound bill): "Some clinics perform abortions on the basis of the results of a urine test alone. These tests can give false positives. There is anecdotal testimony to suggest that women, in some circumstances, have been given an abortion when there was no pregnancy." (Marty includes a link to the complete document in which this quotation appears.)
I also dug up a website called DeathRoe.com (Death Roe, Death Row, get it...? If you don't, the homepage helpfully explains the pun to you.) The site includes a whole page devoted to stories about crooked abortion providers who may performed unnecessary operations. All the cases are clearly isolated examples, and are all from the 80s and 90s. ( http://www.deathroe.com/choice_sux/details.cfm?Category=21 )
I also found an pro-life site that urges young women to verify their pregnancy with a doctor who does not do abortions, lest a corrupt doctor sell you an unneeded operation. (Sydney Masse; http://www.ramahinternational.org/abortion.htm )
I can recall as a child in the 1960s watching a cop show on TV in which the cops arrested an abortion provider. The abortion doctor was a balding old man--suitably creepy, in accordance with the stereotype of the "abortionist" as sleazebag. It seems as if the Radical Right still clings to that stereotype (just as it does to the stereotype of the gay man as a pedophile gleefully seeking innocent young people).
Thank you for doing this research. I was unaware of this really weird trope.
It's important to realize that the radical right has now become the mainstream Republican Party. This stuff is not only part of their platform, but Akin, Ryan and 100% of the Republicans in Congress co-sponsered Akins bill in the House and actually tried to pass it into law.
These guys are the party of the 12th century. They believe the world is flat and we are peasants.
Vote all of the Republicans out. It is time for the Democrats to retake the government for the next few decades. The Republicans have gone insane and lost the ability to lead.
Vote straight Democrat 2012! GObama.
If you ever spent any time in southern Missouri, you'd understand why Akin has actually has some support. The thinking is medieval.
Indeed it is. The sexism, racism, homophobia, rejection of science, refusal to question authority... it's just staggering. It's amazing to me that people born and raised here can possibly grow up to be thinking adults, but it does happen! It happens more than I thought possible when I moved here. Still, thinking adults are a minority in southwest Missouri, which is how we ended up with Billy Long in Congress and a close race between Akin and McCaskill. Sigh.
Do not pick on Missouri too much because we have plenty of Todd Akins walking around in North Dakota too. I went to college in a small North Dakota town before getting married and going into the service. North Dakota is the home of Gordan Kahl types even if these folks make up one percent of the population they scare the hell out of you because much of the population sympathizes with them. Heidi Heitkamp is running as a Democrat out in North Dakota. She has to be an almost anti-Obama Democrat to win. Rick Berg the Republican candidate is a real right winged nut case. Rick Berg thinks its okay to ban all abortions even in cases of rape and incest. Rick Berg supports the Ryan budget all the way down. He wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act that helps women and families get insurance. So its not just Missouri that has problems being medieval. Heidi Heitkamp has to wallow with the ignorant right trolling for enough enlightened votes everyday on her campaign. Not all North Dakotans are like this. But more than a few are and they literally scare the hell out of you.
I was stationed in Kansas for three years and many Kansans are right winged Bible thumping radicals too. Evolution, family planning and birth control, global warming, and abortion are pretty taboo subjects. In many red states all across America, we have people who are living in the dark ages. What is scary is that many of these people think they are God's chosen people. God help you if you do not follow their version of the Bible. Because some of them have plenty of automatic rifles too, like Gordon Kahl who killed two FBI agents in North Dakota. So more than a few of these right winged Christian nut cases might just put a bullet into your head if they have the chance after a disagreement. Trust me these right winged types are very disagreeable people but also their potential for violence is always there. Just ask George Tiller's family who could not even go to church in peace. Claire McCaskill has to walk through this minefield of simmering right winged ignorance, hatred, and potential violence every single day. I respect her for running but I wonder why she bothers sometimes.
That Claire McCaskill is having trouble burrying this jerk tells a lot about either her or the voters in Mo.
......and the "person" actually has the backing of SEVERAL (but not all) high ranking REPublicans....good grief man what is happening in MO if that senate race is still close??
Akin - "giving abortions to women who are not actually pregnant"
Oh my god, look...I know that you can say some pretty dumb things over the course of a career as a public servant - but this takes the cake! How does this work? How do you terminate a pregnancy that doesn't exist???
There has to come a point when Republicans realize they sound totally looney, right? We know that there were presidential contenders on that side that sat out this election, most likely because of stuff like this. Until a rational voice at the national level emerges on the side of the R's, this may be what we have to put up with.
That a member of the House can espouse such knowledge-free ideas and be allowed to serve on the Science committee is appalling.
Based on his statement, he apparently thinks that abortion is illegal and these doctors are just doing it anyway..along with all of this "other law-breaking".
He doesn't just think that wage discrimination against women should be illegal. He thinks that any federal or state labor law legislation is unconstitutional, that the minimum wage laws are a "hindrance" to the right of contract. This guy believes in his soul everything Alexander Stephens said in the Cornerstone Speech in 1861 (which most of these southernist politicians do). Go read the speech (Google "Alexander Stephens Cornerstone Speech") and after you get through the bilge water of slavery of Africans being the natural order of things (and the main reason for their treason), read the "economics" section - it reads like anything you would hear from these fools today.
"You find that along with the culture of death go all kinds of... people who support the death penalty and hunting animals for sport. Does Akin count himself among their number? Probably. In which case he's not only stupid but a hypocrite.
Dirty little secret: Dilation and Curettage. Or "D&C".
I grew up with a couple of older sisters in the 60's and I remember hearing them talk about friends who "had to go in for a D&C". You don't hear nearly as much about it anymore. Although there are legitimate medical reasons for the procedure, which involves the dilation and scraping of the walls of the uterus, I don't think it's much of a stretch to guess at why it's not done as often since, oh i don't know, around 1973.
Of course if you were really well of, you could just go and "study abroad" for a couple of months.
Rachel needs to come clean on her abortion issues. It is fairly obvious.
Family planning and birth control programs should be made available to all American women and girls all across the country free of charge. If you respect women and believe that they are important equals than you have to support this statement. Women are not doormats, they are our wives, daughters, mothers, sisters, girlfriends, and co-worers even bosses. I served besides many women in the military for 20 years and to not support family planning programs and abortion services is an abomination. If you treat women equally with respect than you support the Affordable Care Act that give many women and their families adequate health insurance to see the doctor. I am sick and tired of right winged medieval thinking. Women and girls need organizations like Planned Parenthood. If you are a conservative and offended by this statement go to hell.