Republicans Are Showing Their True Colors
By Gaetana Drake
We’ve all heard the outrageous comments by Representative Todd Akin (R-Missouri), claiming that women don’t get pregnant as a result of a legitimate rape because “the female body has a way of shutting down that function.” First of all, I wonder what a “legitimate” rape is….it seems to exclude statutory rape and incest. Did Mr. Akin skip science and health ed class? Here are some other ridiculous comments by republicans:
Representative Steve King (R) has not spoken out against Mr. Akin because he seems to agree with him. He recently told an Iowa reporter that “I’ve never heard of a child getting pregnant from statutory rape or incest”. A 1996 review by the Guttmacher Institute found that “at least half of all babies born to minor women are fathered by adult men.” That would be the statutory rape that Mr. King doesn’t believe causes pregnancies.
Federal Judge James Leon Holmes, a Bush appointee, said in an article published circa 1997: “Concern for rape victims is a red herring because conceptions from rape occur with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami.”
Dr. Richard Dobbins, who works in the emergency department at Hardin Memorial Hospital in Kenton, Ohio told the Columbus Dispatch in 2006, “I think that life begins when the chromosomes of the sperm and egg line up”. Dobbins also questioned the need for emergency contraception in rape cases, saying that most women “are not fertile during assault or do not become pregnant because the trauma prompts a hormonal response that prevents ovulation.” I wonder….do rapists only rape women who are not in their “fertile period”?
In 1995, Republican Henry Aldridge told the House Appropriations Committee: “The facts show that people who are raped – who are truly raped – the juices don’t flow, the body functions don’t work and they don’t get pregnant”.
Representative Stephen Freind, (R-Delaware County) said “the odds that a woman who is raped will get pregnant are ‘one in millions and millions’. The reason, he said, “is that the traumatic experience of rape causes a woman to ‘secrete a certain secretion’ that tends to kill sperm.”
Texas oilman Clayton Williams once ran against Ann Richards for Governor of Texas. During the campaign he said “Rape is like the weather, if it’s inevitable, relax and enjoy it.”
Idaho Senator Chuck Winder (R) has made this unusual comment. “I would hope that when a woman goes into a physician, with a rape issue, that the physician will indeed ask her about perhaps her marriage, was this pregnancy caused by normal relations in a marriage, or was it truly caused by a rape.” Apparently in his mind, it’s part of “normal relations in a marriage” for a husband to rape his wife.
The GOP has finalized it’s party platform for this election. It includes NO exception for federal funding for abortions for victims of rape or incest. They are finally being honest enough to tell us that their goal is to overturn Roe v. Wade. Mitt Romney has said he would sign a “personhood amendment” which would effectively ban the birth control pill and the IUD. These are the most commonly used and most effective forms of birth control.
Paul Ryan along with Todd Akin (women can shut down that function) co-sponsored a nation-wide personhood amendment that tried to outline the differences in types of rape. Statutory rape, incest and forcible rape are all different categories in their minds. Forcible rape is the only kind where they would allow the woman to have an abortion. The wording in their proposal also required a woman to be able to “prove the rape was against her will.” Will America soon be like Pakistan where it isn’t rape unless it’s witnessed by four other men?
Women still earn .77 to every 1.00 a man earns for doing the same job. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are against the Fair Pay Act. Imagine what women’s earnings will be if they are forced to give birth every year or two….how can a woman hold down a job when she is constantly bearing children? I know, I know…the simple answer is “don’t have sex.” How many relationships will survive that? Sex is a natural part of being a human being.
If the Romney/Ryan ticket wins in November, it won’t be long before women are forced out of their jobs by constant child-bearing, and they and their children live in severe poverty. Oh yeah..don’t forget..they would like to eliminate federal funding to help low-income women and children, too.
Many of these men claim that it is immoral of us to force conscientious taxpayers to fund abortions in these cases. They have no concern about conscientious taxpayers who object to war but are forced to pay for it.
Is this really the kind of America we want?
Eye On Modesto 
Gaetana,
Have you forgotten that Roe v Wade was a case built on a fabrication. “Roe” admitted she was never raped and has since recanted. It never happened. It doesn’t matter that the President voted to kill babies if they survived an abortion? It doesn’t matter that millions of girls have been killed because of Democrats pro-death policy? Why not reveal that the policies that the Democrats have endorsed have kept millions of women in poverty?
I am amazed that Democrats continue to enable men off the hook with government-supplied contraception. Why? So men can fulfill the role of being irresponsible and you can attack them more? Instead, the Democrat position is to let the women bear the consequences, let them have the abortions resulting in depression and life-long physical consequences.
As you list Republicans who “express” thier disagreement of abortion in word, why don’t you list those who really attack women in deed life like Bill Clinton or Ted Kennedy? Why not report the extreme party platform of the Democrats?
Is that the kind of American you really want? I doubt it.
I realize Roe v. Wade was based on a fabrication, but that doesn’t mean it should be over-turned. You seem to miss the point of the article, which is that several elected officials have expressed their belief that women don’t get pregnant as a result of rape. They fail to have a basic understanding of human biology, yet they vote on issues that affect the daily lives of every American woman.
I’m sorry you feel I am attacking men in general, because I agree with you on one thing – men should be more responsible when it comes to birth control.
When you mention the democrat’s pro-death policy, I assume you are talking about their belief that abortion should be safe and legal. Yes, that has resulted in the abortions of millions of females. It has also resulted in the abortions of millions of males, so your comment makes no sense.
When President Obama was a senator from Illinois he voted against a bill that would require life-saving efforts for a fetus that survived a botched abortion. That’s because Illinois already had such a law in effect (since 1975) that provided for that. The new bill that he voted against failed to differentiate between a “viable” fetus and a “non-viable” fetus, and he felt that, if approved, it would give rights to a fetus that would outweigh the rights of the woman (such as the proposed Personhood Amendment supported by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan).
You mention the effects of abortion, including depression and life-long physical consequences. Many studies have been done to determine if women who have abortions suffer from depression afterwards. These studies have found that most women may occasionally look back on the abortion at points in their lives with a twinge of regret, but they do not suffer any higher rates of depression than women who have never had an abortion. These same studies have shown that women who carry an unwanted pregnancy to term suffer from a higher rate of depression for the rest of their lives.
As far as “physical consequences”, I’m not sure what you mean. Do you mean the lie that women who have abortions have a higher rate of cancer? That is not true. What is true is that carrying a pregnancy to term when she is a young woman, helps prevent some types of cancer. That is not the same as saying that abortions cause cancer. The true “physical consequences” of abortion occurred prior to Roe v. Wade, when women often died of infections or bled to death at the hands of back-alley butchers.
You mention “millions of women” in poverty due to democratic policies. Being able to control our reproductive lives has helped reduce the wage gap between men and women. Being able to control our reproductive lives has allowed women to graduate from college at a higher rate than men. Being able to control our reproductive lives has allowed women to have careers, which help them support their families. The republican desire to ban abortion and birth control will only result in a higher rate of poverty for women and children. I’m sure that’s something that neither of us wants.
By the way, it was President Obama who signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which Mitt Romney has said he would over-turn. Democrats tend to treat women as equals, not as chattel to be taken advantage of.
Thank you for your comment. It’s always interesting to hear another point of view.
RoevWade was a case of a woman’s privacy, and the decision was that she had that basic right, and therefore it was no-one elses business.
I find it ironic that we are arguing about rape when that is a very small part of the whole case for legal abortions. The fact that women should have the right to a reasonably safe proceedure as compared to a wire coat hanger or a dirty back ally butchering job by someone that may or may not have any medical knowledge.
Charlie Lockett