America's great with euphemism. Just call it Canola.

I think they've gone far enough calling rape equal to sex out of wedlock. We don't have to make the word mean anything more for it to be completely insulting.

Republicans are stupid. That's why they're Republicans.

Paul Ryan added to this new expansion of rape - it's just another method of conception:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-slans…

I think that the trip up occurs in the fact that most purists on the pro-life front (those that don’t believe in any exception for rape, incest or even the life of the mother) do not view the bun in the oven in the context of the event that put it there on any level other than “wanted and/or intended” or “not wanted and/or not intended” and find those classifications informative but not really actionable (beyond placing the child for adoption or some other long term planning that assumes a baby is coming).

It’s not unreasonable, if you believe LIFE starts at conception, to believe it is murder to intentionally end a life started regardless of the circumstances it started under (no matter how horrific).

I’m not saying I share that view (I don’t). I was just raised around enough people who hold that view to know where it comes from and to realize that it is a point of faith, and not negotiable. They honestly believe that to end a pregnancy is to kill a child, and they can’t talk themselves into moral equivalencies based on the events that started that pregnancy or anything else.

To that end all pregnancies are exactly the same in that they are 1.) either “wanted” or “un-wanted” and 2.) innocent life that must be protected.

Haha, this is why people need to keep pushing the issue. It is impossible to defend this stance without sticking your foot in your mouth.

Keep it up Repubs, eventually you might find a way to express your views without sounding like you're both pro-life and pro-rape.

Reached for comment, Rep. Smith's daughter confirmed to this reporter that her father is an asshole. "Flaming asshole," she clarified. "Wait. Gaping and flaming."

Put yourself in a rapist's position. Yes, it is similar.

Proves once again that this is not about life but about women using their bodies in a way acceptable to men.

@5 But you're assuming that blind faith is reasonable.

He added, "Put yourself in a father's position. Yes, it is similar."

Only in the mind of a religious extremist does the position of the father of the rape victim take precedence over that of the rape victim herself.

On a completely unrelated note ... do you suppose that his daughter managed to skip sex ed in high school? Maybe home schooling or a note saying she didn't have to attend?

Anyway, back to the subject. What kind of father thinks that his daughter and her boyfriend having (I'm guessing) consensual sex is similar to his daughter being raped? Other than the basic process.

@13: The kind of man who views the situation as someone else using his property in a way he doesn't approve of.

I will never again hear the word "homework" without thinking "it's your night to rape the children's homework".

Even if the guy who knocked up his daughter is a rightwing nutjob, I doubt that he or the daughter appreciates being cast as rapist and rape victim.

@10

hi five!

@14 yes, precisely.

For the sake of this comment, let's assume that Akin is an intelligent person who was making his comment dumb enough for the average Joe to get a handle on (if you can't do that and want to launch into some irate conniption, then don't bother reading on).

Point 1:

For those who say they are against abortion 100% (and only those), because they care about the life of the child, I can't see how the method in which the impregnation occurs can have any effect on that opinion.

This is not my opinion, but for those people, I don't see how they can morally say anything but the person has to bring the child to term. What justification can they possibly provide?

2.

Legitimate Rape. Rape is horrible and everything should be done possible to support the victim.

However -- in reading around the web, there are many suggestions (and I have had experience with a case of this regarding a friend), that America has created a "culture of rape" especially on our college campuses. These organizations are set up to define almost any sexual activity as a crime by man on woman even if any honest observer were to report it as consensual. This bureaucracy and culture of shame and anti-male outlook will twist words turn people into criminals who shouldn't be....and even a majority of college coeds are now supporting this opinion that the agenda has gone too, too far in defining what is, and what isn't.

That said...I would change my vocabulary, Senator.

@19 - I think that the real issue is that Todd Akin believes that the female body has a magical rape-pregnancy "off switch". It's the fake science quoting that has him in more trouble than the legitimate rape gaffe. In my opinion at least.

#20

Well, reading this article from Slate, it would appear he's mixing both what I said and what you said.

In case anybody missed this dig at the “no means no” crowd, “legitimate rape” is a coded phrase meant to distinguish between a stranger attacking you in a parking garage, or, say, your date or your youth pastor doing the same. If you’re tipsy or wearing a short skirt, it’s not rape-rape, etc.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/201…

My attempt to disentangle this is he [AKIN NOT ME] is talking both about what is also called a "false rape" or an unfounded allegation of rape.

He [AKIN NOT ME] is saying, if two people get moderately drunk at a party, in front of hundreds of people, and start making out in public and then get horny and the female says, "I want you inside me" and takes the guy to her apartment, puts a condom on him with her mouth and then it breaks after six hours of riding him, if she gets pregnant she cannot claim rape in order to have an abortion. [AKIN IS SAYING THIS NOT ME.]

Thanks to God that most if not all of these comments show that men have much more sense, compassion, logic, and just decency than the few idiots and heartless ones who are the subject of this and many other stories. Thanks, guys! We love you all, and life would be nothing without you! Regardless of these types, lol. ;) <3

@21

do you ever have a creeping sensation that you're not helping when you type garbage like this?

To be a Republican you have to have half your brain removed. Just ask Lush Rimjob.

@12 is the only one getting this right.

@19 "You are what you pretend to be." Which makes Akin an idiot, literally. Leaders need to lead.

RARGH.

I'm old, Roe v Wade was decided on a basis of public health. Women were dying.

I remember my mother an RN telling the story about how when she was doing her emergency room internship. She had to shove her hand inside a woman who was bleeding out due to a botched abortion and pinch off the bleeder as they ran the gurney into surgery.

I remember my father (a Minister) telling me about the Catholic family that brought an infant born as the result of rape to him to be baptized because their parish priest wouldn't.

Why the fuck is this argument still going on after 50 years?

The government's role in this situation is to provide health care.

The church's role is to provide succor.

The individual's role is to struggle and decide.

"Win" should not be part of the equation

I'd love to know what was to come after that, "I didn't have to..." Didn't have to what, beat her bloody? Lock her up until it was too late to abort?
Joke, yes; but a person who believes in banning abortion (and also apparently doesn't believe ANY woman can consent to sex) by definition does bot believe women have bodily autonomy.

@5, in my experience with anti-abortion activists, they don't start with a conviction that life begins at conception and then say to the woman with an unwanted pregnancy, sorry but our hands are tied, that's a person in your belly and you can't kill it. For them, outlawing abortion is explicitly about keeping women from escaping the punishment of pregnancy for the sin of having sex. Life's beginning at conception is just a convenient philosophical veil they throw over their slut-shaming. I'm not saying its impossible to be a generous, tolerant person who is motivated purely by some abstract philosophical conviction to oppose abortion, but I've never seen it (and I've known plenty of anti-abortion activists).

#23.

Yes.

It's very CREEP-y when you appear out of the woodwork.

All I get from that statement is Todd Akin has a rape baby somewhere out in the world.

*shudder*

@5: I might have the slightest bit of pity for how they feel about unborn babies if they could only extend the slightest bit of that "care" to people who already fucking exist.

@29

What the hell are you talking about? I was very much all over this site yesterday, trying to get into a competition with the troll to see which of us had less of a life. It's not my fault you decided to totally bum me out in the middle of all that.

@13,

In much of the country, there's no such thing as sex ed. In most of the rest, parents have to give their permission to allow their kids to take it. Do you think this fuckwad gave his permission?

Rape and single motherhood are more alike than you think, but differently. An individual is, quite obviously, violated in being raped. However, a single mother is not violated with single motherhood, but she rather violates any offspring and society as a whole; she produces children, on average, far more likely to commit suicide, commit violent crimes, end up in jail, engage in drug abuse, and in general far more likely to be a drain on society's resources.

We really shouldn't encourage single motherhood. If they want to have children in that matter they should have to do it out of their own pocket, rather than demand the government to behave as surrogate provider. Incidentally, where do you think the government is getting all that money from? The government compels third parties to pay taxes to keep that dumb bitch's baby in food-stamp heaven. With welfare and other social support, women are more or less paid to have children. Unsurprising you see so many single mothers, when single motherhood is a perfectly viable means of subsistence. That is perfectly viable for the mother, absolutely catastrophic for any children and society.

I'm not sure if I can hunt down the study, but I believe it illustrated that a household consisting of two men (that is gay) was the most effective household for the raising of children. Perhaps it's because they must absolutely plan parenthood, without really many other means of obtaining children to parent?

Oh c'mon, the obvious extrapolation is that he raped his daughter which is why he thinks/calls unwed mother as the same as a rape victim... they are as far as he knows.

@34: Wow CS. You reallyreallyREALLY hate women don't you? Crimany man, what'd a vagina ever do to you?

Note how it's all about him: "[...] She knew my views." "Put yourself in a father's position." This is basically an admission that their primary concern is their control over women and their parts, not concern for the women (or fetuses) themselves. This is a window into the mentality of dickless anti-choicers.

Also, 21, that's not at all what Akin was talking about. He's claiming that "real rape" can't get women pregnant, and so pregnancy itself is evidence that she's lying. This is disproven bullshit, and it's completely irrelevant which specific scenarios Akin imagines not to be rape.

36: Nothing. No vagina anywhere has done, or ever will do, a single thing to him. And that's the problem.

@38: One does have to wonder if that is indeed the case......