Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive. – George Eliot
As so often happens in American politics, a politician has said something incredibly stupid, and many people have reacted with either real, exaggerated or faux outrage. It’s inevitable that politicians will say stupid, ignorant, bigoted, offensive things because only a brutal savage wants control over other people; therefore only brutal savages seek power and we are governed by the most foolish, greedy, irresponsible, power-mad and least evolved among us. So it’s a bit tiring to see people behaving as though such statements are somehow surprising or shocking, and abhorrent that they ignore equally-outrageous statements from other power-mad throwbacks when it suits their political agenda to do so.
I’m speaking, of course, of the recent comments by a Missouri politician that victims of “legitimate rape” are somehow immune to impregnation:
Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri…justified his opposition to abortion rights even in case of rape with a claim that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy. “First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Akin said that even in the worst-case scenario — when the supposed natural protections against unwanted pregnancy fail — abortion should still not be a legal option for the rape victim. “Let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work, or something,” Akin said. “I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child”…
This reaction to this moronic statement was as predictable as sunrise: the media had a ball with it, Akin’s opponent and others claimed to be “shocked”, Republicans distanced themselves from him, Democrats touted the statement as a purely Republican form of buffoonery, Akin claimed to have “misspoken” and feminists entirely missed the point and began an endless and dreary denunciation of the term “legitimate rape” based on the nonsensical but politically-advantageous concept that everything legally classified as “rape”, from teen sex to alcohol-fueled misunderstandings to aggravated rape by a stranger at gunpoint, is morally indistinguishable and equally traumatic. But the most revolting reaction of all was the one from partisans, academics, journalists, politicians and other pseudo-intellectuals who jumped on Akin for being scientifically illiterate, despite the obvious fact that they are every bit as willing to ignore science as he is when it suits them to do so:
For a party intent on closing a gender gap that could spell electoral disaster, the Republican Party sure keeps saying the most remarkable things. Put aside for the moment the persistent efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, the many personhood and mandatory invasive ultrasound bills, and even Mitt Romney’s selection of the vehemently anti-choice Paul Ryan as his running mate. Now we have this from Rep. Todd Akin…[who] informs us—based on fake science that he and others on the far right endorse—that the body can shut down a pregnancy in cases of “legitimate” rape, therefore abortion should not be legal in any case. For the record, about 32,000 pregnancies every year result from rape…
Now, I’m not surprised to see such blatant hypocrisy spewing forth from the likes of Eliot Spitzer, one of the filthiest and most disgusting hypocrites currently besmirching the Earth with his loathsome presence. Nor am I at all shocked to see he and others who can’t do simple math pointing fingers at others for being ignorant of biology. After all, they are politicians, the moral equivalent of the sorts of things one finds upon turning over a rock. But what does royally piss me off and fill me with righteous indignation are the number of partisan sheep currently polluting the blogosphere and the Twitterverse with their bleating about how ignoring facts, reason and science in favor of a faith-based dogma is only bad and wrong when it supports the ugly, hateful, repressive agenda favored by another “tribe”, but right and good when it supports their own equally ugly, equally hateful and equally repressive schema. Either one accepts the scientific method, or one does not; either one recognizes that the universe is innately knowable via the tools of research, data collection and rigorous testing, or rejects that view in favor of the doctrine that truth is revealed via the sacred pronouncements of authority figures. Anyone who has ever rejected cold, hard facts because they are inconvenient to his or her world view, or presumes the right to speak for others whose experience he or she does not share, or who proclaims that public policy should be based upon the way he or she would like the world to be rather than the way it is, has absolutely no damned business criticizing others for their equally false, pseudoscientific and faith-based beliefs.
thank you, Maggie.
This is not the first time a Republican has floated the whole “no pregnancy from forcible rape” idea. It’s been mentioned again and again, since the 1980’s.
Why? Because the sticking point many have with their anti-abortion agenda is pregnancy caused by rape/ So, if they can claim it doesn’t happen, that one goes away.
It’s a lie, and they know it, but it’s a convenient one.
We long ago discarded any respect for truth, factual evidence, or intellectual rigor in this nation. From scripted “reality” shows to lies told by supposed leaders, we all want a fantasy that serves us.
Hey don’t yell at me here – but honestly – as a former “conservative” and former “pro-lifer” … this is the first time I’ve heard of the magic female voodoo skill of automatically terminating a pregnancy that resulted from forced rape. Seriously – this guy is alone because I can assure you that 99.999% of pro-lifers don’t agree with him on this.
Second – rape is not really a “sticking point” for pro-lifers. Pro-lifers (rather, “anti-abortionists) have always said it’s wrong to punish the child for the father’s actions. Further – every human alive today is the result of thousands of human copulations that had to take place at precise times throughout the history of mankind in order for each of us to be here today. Eliminate even one of those copulations – and you wouldn’t be here. How many of my “thousands” of my ancestral “grandmothers” were impregnated through rape – or incest? I submit that – probably hundreds of them were and this goes for each of us.
I’m Pro-Abortion now … for those who want it – more power to them. For me and my family – it’s just not an option. I’m only explaining the major thought process here of someone who used to be on the other side.
Can you give an example here? I didn’t understand what you were talking about – I don’t do Twitter that much.
Meh – as soon as I saw Akin’s comments I knew he was going to get a knot jerked in his ass by everyone.
Whatever – HE DID win the Republican primary in Missouri and was the choice of the Republican voters. As so often turns out in this day and age – the guy that gets picked turns out to be a completely unbalanced idiot and, in this, the GOP is not alone (Al Gore and John Kerry come to my mind).
It seems the only people seeking office in the major parties these days are buffoons.
Be that as it may – the Republican Ayatollahs have struck Akins with the speed of a brushfire and the NRSC has vowed not to give him a single penny. Republicans everywhere are demanding he withdraw – I say he should stay in – because …
He beat two other candidates in the primary. One gal endorsed by Sarah Palin and the other guy – a GOP Ayatollah establishment favorite who spend like 7 to 10 million of his own money. Akins got like 38 percent of the vote and the other two got 28. If Akins drops out – who’s gonna take his place? Sarah Palin’s gal or the Ayatollah’s boy?
It’s basically fucked. Glad I don’t have to vote in that election – because now you got a choice between a guy who believes in biological voodoo vs a woman who was one of ObamaCare’s biggest proponents. I wouldn’t want to vote for either.
Where’s the libertarian candidate in this case? He or she could pick up a lot of conservative votes from those who are disgusted with Akins.
There are huge numbers of people wrapping themselves in the cloak of science, criticizing Akin for ignoring it…yet they themselves ignore the facts about sex work, numbers which contradict their economic agendas, facts about how their own political candidates have actually behaved, facts about male/female differences, facts about the drug war, strong scientific theories about human psychology and climate change, etc, etc, ad nauseam.
Okay – I get that. However, if you’re talking about the “Ayatollahs” of the Republican Party (otherwise popularly known as “the establishment” – but I call them Ayatollahs because they behave thusly) … anyway …
The Ayatollahs are not ideologues … they are not attacking Akin because they feel strongly one way or the other about what he said. They are attacking him because he said something they know is unpopular and this gives them an excuse to go nuclear on the fellow, overturn a popular primary and insert their own establishment candidate in his place (completely bypassing GOP voters – AS THEY DID with Lisa Murkowski in Alaska).
They didn’t like the outcome of the election – so they’re using this as a method to whip up the troops to throw Akin off the ticket.
The voters picked the wrong dude – it happens – now they gotta live with him and learn to vet their candidates more in the future. But the Ayatollahs have no right to cut this guy off from food and water when their own voters selected the dude.
This is why I’m voting for Obama. Push the prohibitionist shit to the side, and I mostly agree with Republicans on things (smaller government, market capitalism, self-sufficiency, etc) … however, electing Mitt Romney doesn’t install those values in the oval office. What you have in the GOP right now is a consortium of scumbag Ayatollahs led by Mitch McConnell, John “Crybaby” Boehner, John Cornyn and Mitt Romney. They don’t really give a shit about abortion – or rape … but they are willing to lather up their little conservative slaves using those issues to get them marching lock-step to the polls in November like Zombies voting for their establishment candidates.
I can’t find a reference quickly, but when this originally broke I read in multiple places that Akin’s campaign was heavily supported by his Democratic opponent, Claire McCaskill, because she felt he was the most beatable candidate put up by the Republicans. Tellingly, she has not called for him to drop out now, probably because any possible replacement would prove to be a more difficult opponent.
One might be right from the quote itself. That 32,000 number is based on a single study of 4,000 women. Guttmacher’s numbers are at about 10,000. The difference is probably related to, as Maggie has shown, significant overestimates of the incidence of rape, which are touted as fact by such as Spitzer (http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/imaginary-crises/).
Another might be his claims about invasive ultrasounds which ignore that ultrasounds are often standard in abortions. The ultrasound bill are bad bad law, but the response of the Left to them has been appalling shrill.
“Pro-Lifers” should have known what the reaction of the “left” would be to those circus clown tricks. Stupid shit.
Look, as long as something is LEGAL – no one has the right to bully a little girl into not having an abortion. I don’t believe in harassment of women walking into abortion clinics.
It’s all about “messaging” and these stupid antics turn people off – and away from the “pro-life” position. Not that I particularly care.
I read recently that official Republican policy is to force women who become pregnant through rape to carry the pregnancy to delivery. Can this really be true?
That’s the policy of extreme anti-abortionists, but not of all anti-abortionists and certainly not the official policy of either half of the American Big Government Party. Not yet, anyway; tomorrow the wind may change direction.
Just out …
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57497592-503544/republicans-approve-platform-with-strict-anti-abortion-language/
Republican platform won’t address any “exceptions” really. CBS is saying that this means there are no exceptions but this is standard operating procedure for the GOP since there is so much dissention in the ranks about what to do about exceptions.
Romney-Ryan campaign has been forced to address the issue since Akin’s comments and they’re saying that the Romney-Ryan positions allows exceptions for rape and incest.
Let’s be clear here – Romney doesn’t care about this issue one way or the other and, indeed – when running for Governor in a liberal state he ran as PRO-CHOICE. Now he perceives himself running for the head of an extremely conservative national GOP and he has had a magical “epiphany” which has made him now “Pro-Life”.
In actuality – there’s nothing to fear on the issue of abortion from a Romney-Ryan administration. As long as the polls continue to reflect that a majority of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in certain instances – there will be no change to the status quo from these guys and that INCLUDES tipping the balance of the Supreme Court in the direction of the anti-Roe V. Wade crowd. Romney won’t do it – he’ll pick an otherwise conservative looking judge who believes Roe V. Wade is good law. This is the way the Ayatollahs work – you will notice that the one vote that preserved ObamaCare this year came from a CONSERVATIVE judge appointed by Bush. GOP Ayatollahs only appoint conservative ideologues when there is no chance the selection will unbalance the court. They don’t want the party to receive the backlash for the opinions of conservative judges.
The GOP platform does not carve out a specific exemption for rape. But:
1) we’re talking about 1% of all abortions
2) the platform has never made that distinction even though most GOP politicians do
3) who the hell cares about the platform? Mitt Romney certainly won’t pay attention to whatever it is he’s running on this week.
The rape issue is a really difficult one for the pro-lifers. If your position is that the fetus has a right to live and that right trumps the woman’s control of her body, why should you carve out a rape exemption? The fetus didn’t commit a crime. I think the GOP is slowly swinging around to the “no rape exemption” position as they resolve the conflict the way moral crusaders always do — with absolutism.
I know……..its such a pain. After hearing this i looked up the science. Thats my first go to “what does the science say” of course science is “a work in progress” but it is the best we have for getting the the best couse of action and ideas.both side seemed to have cherry picked there favorites and dumped the rest. no good science from either side. Always go to the raw science first. then make a corse of action. sam
Maggie, not to start a fight or anything, but I was wondering about how this interplayed with the Julian Assange thing. Many of the same people denouncing the “legitimate rape” angle were more than happy to question whether Assange’s accusers had been “legtimately raped” after they allegedly withdrew consent. You questioned the motivations behind the allegations, but I’d like to hear your opinion on it again and what you think distinguishes what Akin said from what Assange’s supporters have said.
Not trying to be a jerk or anything; just honestly interested in the subtleties! 🙂
Personally, I think the outcry over the phrase “legitimate rape” was almost as moronic as Akin’s statement. It’s clear he meant “violent rape” or “forcible rape” and chose a poor word to express that; I think crucifying an opponent over a poor word choice is puerile at best and self-destructive at worst, considering everyone makes poor word choices from time to time.
That having been said, I agree with you that many of the people denouncing Akin also support Assange, and they’re exaggerating their “rape” outrage for the former while downplaying it for the latter because it isn’t the REAL issue in either case. Both are just cases of a man’s ideological enemies using a rape-related accusation to smear him, when in fact many of them couldn’t possibly give less of a damn about women or rape.
I took the “legitimate” rape to mean “non-statutory rape” (ie consensual but under age sex). Extempore speaking quite often produces verbiage like this.
I took “legitimate” rape to mean “non-fake”, ie where a woman was actually raped as opposed to making it up to get an abortion.
[Annotation for the uncontrollably politically correct:
There are a bunch of idiots who claim to believe that the only evidence that should be required to determine consent in rape prosecutions is the woman’s word.
There are another bunch of idiots who claim to believe that this is already the case and there is an epidemic of men going to prison for false rape accusations.
I am a different sort of idiot from either of these.]
I think what Akin meant by “legitimate rape” is much the same as what Whoopie Goldberg meant by “rape rape”. Ms Goldberg, discussing Roman Polanski’s pending extradition to the USA for an old statutory rape charge, said
There is little question that Ms Goldberg is of a political persuasion antithetical to that of Mr Akin. So it appears that spontaneous or extemporaneous terminology to distinguish forcible rape from statutory rape varies by political persuasion.
How’s that for finding both correlation and causation with only two data points?
What I think he actually meant is, “if we have an exception for rape, and abortion remains legal to cover that exception, then women who have not been raped but want abortions for other reasons will lie about having been raped in order to obtain abortions.”
This is a true fact, but it doesn’t work as an argument for me because I believe in self-ownership for adult women. (In other words, I’m not in favor of restrictions on abortion. I think unless you are willing to enslave pregnant women until they come to term, they’ll find a way if they want to. I prefer allowing them to see a doctor than for them to try throwing themselves down the stairs.)
Where he got into trouble was the quack science that says, “Well no woman who has actually been raped will get pregnant from it, because that’s medically impossible,” That is quack science, but I don’t doubt that he actually believes it. An elderly Asian woman I know thinks sleeping on a magnetic mattress will cure most ailments. (Of course, she’s not running for political office.)
You put that in quotes, I may be wrong here – but I don’t think that is what he said. The quote from Maggie is above and I believe what he was saying was …
A. Pregnancy from rape is really rare (but CAN happen).
B. Women have natural defenses to “shut that whole thing down” so that pregnancy doesn’t happen.
C. Yes, sometimes it does happen anyway.
D. He still doesn’t think the child should be punished for the rape.
I don’t know – maybe some doctor did tell him at some time that women have a natural defense. Clearly his words state that he doesn’t believe it’s a 100 percent safeguard though.
I’ve thought this through – and I’m of the mind that this is much adieu about nothing. This “outrage” is about two things …
1. Democrats attempting to use this as further evidence for their absurd assertion that the GOP has a “War on Women” going on and …
2. Republican Ayatollahs – upset that their cocktail candidate LOST the primary to Akins want a “mulligan”.
I mean – anyone could take this guy aside and tell him his views on female biology are way the fuck off base – but hell, lots of pols have said stupid things before … “It depends on what your definition of ‘is’ … is.”
Let him run and let the voters choose between Akins, McCaskill and Libertarian guy – named “Dime” I think.
It wasn’t “some doctor,” it was Dr. Jack C. Willke. And Akin isn’t all alone here. This is a common line with anti-abortion politicians. Most of them kind of know it’s bullshit, or at least know that the general public believe (correctly) that it’s bullshit, so they have enough sense to only say it when they are not only preaching to the choir, but when they have a reasonable expectation that no non-choir people are present. Akin believes it, or did, and so he didn’t realize it was a political act of suicide so say it on the air.
Some of the people showing outrage, while themselves getting the numbers and other facts wrong on other issues, are sincere. They truly believe their own bullshit, and are outraged by what they see as bullshit. They are wrong as the day is long, but they are not hypocritical, just lazy.
And then of course some are card-carrying hypocrites.
Obama ante’d up with him decrying the formulation of “legitimate rape.” Personally, I think he should have consulted with Whoopi Goldberg as to whether “legitimate rape” was on speaking terms with “rape rape.”
Oops, sorry En Passant, I commented without reading all and you beat me there.
I don’t think humans are usually ‘truth-seekers’ in a strict sense of the term; not unless it’s immediately useful to them to know or attempt to know some fact with a high degree of accuracy. Politics is mostly about things that happen to other, far away people that we as individuals can’t really influence in any concrete sense. As a result, there’s no incentive to give such topics even the tiniest bit of thought, and so the whole thing runs on base emotions and tribalism. Our guys are good, virtuous, knights who at worst are imperfect, the other team are terrible, horrible, liars who don’t actually believe anything they say, as it’s simply a shrewd attempt to spread Evil(tm).
The ‘science’ involved in Akin’s statement is literally medieval; Reuters and the Guardian both citied the sources, which were accepted by medical professionals up to the early 1800s. (The theory has long since been shown to be wrong, and no credible medical professional accepts the idea.)
I think you’re being a bit harsh on politicians in general (although not this one in specifics). It is possible to want to be in charge in order to better help people. Granted, such politicians rarely make the news, because they’re too busy doing what needs to be done rather than grabbing headlines; but they did (and do) exist.
Both the Right and Left attempt to ruthlessly censor each other, and idealogues on both sides don’t let science stand in the way of winning.
True, and some people survive losing Russian Roulette or bailing out of airplanes without parachutes. But as with moral politicians, those phenomena are far too rare to count on.
Might I recommend ‘Bulworth’, a sadly neglected Beatty film, as a very brief synopsis of the evolution of a conscientious politician? Yes, it’s a bit over the top at times, and a bit contrived, but in some ways it was far more accurate than many documentaries on the subject. And funny, if your sense of humor is such that you can laugh while exclaiming, ‘why am I laughing, this isn’t funny’ sort of way.
You know, maybe we need to go back to the long “lame-duck” period of the 19th Century, when officials elected in November don’t take the oath until March — and spend the period in between getting an intensive education in science, history, science, world affairs, science, how Washington actually works and science.
Especially if they had to conduct a thesis defense before the Surgeon General, the Director of the National Science Foundation, the Parliamentarian of the House and the Attorney General….
Thank you very much for pointing out this nuance of the sadly misused term. Admittedly, Akin is definitely not the person I would have chosen to make the case for false rape accusations and rape hysteria, but the reactions speak volumes about it.
Of course, anyone who dares to point out what you did in any major news outlet (MSN, Yahoo, NYT, WP, CNN, etc) will instantly be downvoted to oblivion or banned.
I don’t know, Maggie. Akin is egregiously, deplorably wrong whether his critics are hypocrites or not. I’d be more worried if stupid remarks didn’t get shouted down.
Nobody disagrees that he’s wrong, but it’s sickening to watch people who are his exact moral equivalents putting on airs simply because the egregiously stupid things they believe are accepted by a larger number of idiots than they egregiously stupid things he believes.
No “john school” for Eliot Spitzer.
“yet they themselves ignore the facts about sex work, numbers which contradict their economic agendas”
Are the 30,000 prostitutes trafficked into Florida for the Republican convention going to flee that hurricane, or stay and tough it out?
It will be found after the convention that the Wandering Harlots failed to put in an appearance, and then we will be told, “Well yeah, but that’s only because there was a hurricane.”
“I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don’t vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, ‘If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain,’ but where’s the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote — who did not even leave the house on Election Day — am in no way responsible for that these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created.”
George Carlin
It actually tickles me to see that the public education system is not only dumbing down the surf class, but also effecting the elites as well.
I totally agree with Carlin. To vote is to make a tacit agreement to abide by the results of the voting, and to accept the authority of whoever is elected. Therefore those who vote have no right to complain unless there is actual fraud, but the system did EXACTLY what it was designed to do: give power to the winner of a popularity contest. I don’t participate, therefore I have not entered into any agreement to recognize the winners of said contest nor to submit to their authority.
Does that mean you don’t bother with write-in ballots? Do they have those in your area? That’s what I’m thinking of doing in this election, if there’s no one worth voting for, I’ll write in my own choice. Therefore, I could say I participated but still spoke my own mind.
Carlin may have a point but it’s sad that we as a nation seem to have forgotten the other half of his scenario: if a group votes in a “dishonest, incompetent” politician, then it’s their responsibility to remove said politician as soon as their incompetence is discovered. Perhaps if that happened more often, there wouldn’t be as many dishonest, incompetent politicians.
Which brings me to another question. Maggie, do you feel the system was always this way, or that somewhere along the line it got horribly perverted into the “popularity contest”?
IMHO write-in ballots are only useful if one expects someone to note the protest, or if one can organize a large enough write-in campaign to actually elect an outsider candidate that way.
As for the system, history shows it’s been broken since it was invented in Ancient Greece; it would take a lot of redesign to turn into something which could actually preserve liberty.
Personally, I agree with Bryan Caplan’s thesis in The Myth of the Rational Voter; namely that (even) a perfectly functioning democracy will always fall short of reliably guaranteeing individual liberties (or even reasonably sacrificing liberty for economic efficiency gains) – democracy most sacrifices liberty in the process of making the economy less efficient. Indeed, I suspect most of us enjoy far more liberties (and wealth) than we would in a direct democracy. It’s a system which probably is more prone to producing normative liberty than, say, a dictatorship, but the kind of system Maggie, myself, or most vaguely libertarian persons might design is probably more dissimilar from modern democracies than modern democracies are from modern or near-modern authoritarian regimes.
Whenever someone is emotionally invested in a belief (any belief), the temptation is to ignore or overlook evidence that disproves it. Sad but true.
Akin did indeed make a total fool of himself. But it says a lot about media bias when similarly outrageous leaps by the likes of Joe Biden never see the light of day outside of conservative forums.
The theological roots of “legitimate” rape:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/sarahposner/6298/the_theological_roots_of_akin%E2%80%99s_%E2%80%9Clegitimate_rape%E2%80%9D_comment/
The fundemantal problem with democracy as we practice it is that even if you mark something on a write-in ballot, you’re still electing a temporary dictator – or at least a temporary Archon, with the power to rule you.
Ideally, the government would be directly elected (no electoral colleges – what a joke that is), extremely limited in power, subject to public approval and recall, and umable to enact major changes without a specific, controlled mandate from the people through an opinion-getting mechanism that was reliable and required a quorum.
The fact is, we elect kings who presume to rule over us. My answer to authorities who assume legitimacy based on this: there’s a Western tradition abotu what to do with kings. It dates back to a spring day and the Senate of Rome.
Et tu, Brute?
PS, referenda and plebiscites might work. More properly, voluntary association and avoidance of power monopolies would be better. Imagine a system where land was not the basis of legislative authority: a town has control over a certain piece of land. Instead, imagine a person or group within that land could opt out of, say, paying taxes for schools if they had no children.
Better yet, … a solution to all of that is simple. User fees pay for everything.
If we require welfare, there are ways to deliver this which don’t enfeeble and enslave the masses receiving it.
[…] (which regulate fear and anxiety) is suppressed. This is, of course, exactly the opposite of a US politician’s astonishingly ignorant “theory” that biological mechanisms evolved for the convenience and peace of mind of individuals rather […]