Todd Akin's Not Alone

Election season is supposed to be a time where Americans gather round and congratulate each other for displaying “democracy in action” in between bouts of infuriating dinner-table banter about poorly understood political issues. It’s supposed to be some sort of massive, beautiful event showing our defining values. But this year, we’re showing something much worse.

Let’s pause for a second and recap important issues around the globe from the past week: Syria is facing such an increase in violence that Turkey is running out of space for refugees; South African police attempted to quell a strike by killing 44 miners; Russia jailed a punk band for “hooliganism;” Egypt is defying American wishes and sending its president to Iran for the first time since Khomeini took power; and the Euro looks closer to collapse with every passing day.

Meanwhile, we’re ignoring those issues because we’re too busy explaining basic sex-ed to a Congressman. But not just any Congressman--a Congressman who sits on the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

In case you missed it, Todd Akin--Representative from Missouri and Republican nominee for Senate--claimed that rape victims have some sort of biological response to “shut that whole [pregnancy] thing down” in the case of “legitimate rape”:

Well you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, well how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.

Facing an obvious and obviously deserved backlash, Akin retracted his statement and claimed he “misspoke,” but the damage was already done. Our nation’s most respected news outlets have been forced to explain the reproduction cycle to a man who helps decide funding for the Nation Science Foundation. (The National Science Foundation!) 

It is almost entirely incomprehensible. How is it possible an elected official has invented anti-rape-pregnancy powers? Is he honestly legislating on the basis of those ideas? I actually find myself doubting whether or not Akin truly meant what he said, if only to preserve some sort of respect for our government. But then I’m faced with an equally perplexing issue: is there any way that Akin’s implications could be a successful political policy?

Unfortunately, it seems they might be. Up until his comments anyway, Akin was leading his Senate race. Setting aside for the moment the questions about what “illegitimate rape” might be and where he learned biology, the conclusion Akin drew from his comments is oddly familiar:

But let’s assume that maybe [the body’s magical-anti-rape-pregnancy-emergency-shut-down-system] didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child. 

[NB: All issues of objectivity aside, I honestly can’t think of a paraphrase that doesn’t make Akin sound less than totally ridiculous.]

Akin’s insane statement is actually just a party line stance explained in the worst way possible. In that sense, Akin obviously provides immense firepower for Democrats against Republican birth control policies. But the perhaps more terrifying outcome is how strikingly obvious it has now become that Akin isn’t an odd man out who happened to join Congress through some Robin Williams plot line. He’s part and parcel of American politics.

After all, as Amy Davison and others have pointed out, Akin used this logic to co-sponsor a bill that limited federal funding for abortions to cases of “forcible rape” instead of “rape.” (Apparently there must be at least some bruising for a rape to be “legitimate.”) But the bill is one that Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan also supported. The GOP has pulled funding from Akin’s campaign, but it looks increasingly as though that move was not to support rape-victims, but rather to defend the consequences Akin draws from his imaginary biology from looking as silly as they do right now.

In other words, “debating” how babies are born and whether or not rape is rape without physical violence is now a significant part of how we decide the next leader of the free world and the Congress he works with. Of course, that’s not a debate at all--it’s an infantile screaming match. 

It’s hard--maybe even cartoonish--to imagine this issue as a deciding factor in the leadership of a hegemonic world power. But then again, if anything has become evident at this point in the election cycle, it’s how utterly ridiculous we’re making ourselves out to be.