During an interview with Dana “Pees on Corpses” Loesch, Todd Akin opened his mouth and stupid fell out.
From Think Progress:
AKIN: You know, Dr. Willke has just released a statement and part of his letter, I think he just stated it very clearly. He said, of course Akin never used the word legitimate to refer to the rapist, but to false claims like those made in Roe v. Wade and I think that simplifies it….. There isn’t any legitimate rapist…. [I was] making the point that there were people who use false claims, like those that basically created Roe v. Wade.
What? False rape claims did not “create” Roe v. Wade. A constitutional right to privacy “created” Roe v. Wade, and a balancing of that right against the purported interest that states have in protecting the health of the woman. Whatever facts led to the Court hearing the case are irrelevant to the outcome of the case.
I mean, come on.
Moving on.
Here is what this Dr. Willke (who is the source for Akin’s “female body shuts down pregnancy” hokum) has said about pregnancy and rape:
Dr. John C. Willke, a general practitioner with obstetric training and a former president of the National Right to Life Committee, was an early proponent of this view, articulating it in a book originally published in 1985 and again in a 1999 article. He reiterated it in an interview Monday.
“This is a traumatic thing — she’s, shall we say, she’s uptight,” Dr. Willke said of a woman being raped, adding, “She is frightened, tight, and so on. And sperm, if deposited in her vagina, are less likely to be able to fertilize. The tubes are spastic.”
“She’s uptight”? I think I’m going to throw up.
Oh and by the way? Dr. Willke was a Romney surrogate back in 2007.
[read full post at ABLC]
Porco Rosso
The tubes are spastic is a new tagline
Chris T.
The Internet is a series of tubes that are spastic.
Southern Beale
I want to see a million women marching on Washington burning their bras, like when I was a kid. GOP is already scared shitless about losing the female vote. Let’s show ’em some fucking ACTION already. God damn.
Eve Ensler has a great essay up and a twitter hash tag and there’s an action planned for … February 14 2013. That’s TOO FUCKING LATE. We need to tell these assholes there are consequences for their idiocy.
Just saw a Steve King quote where he said he’d never heard of pregnancy from rape or incest. I mean Christ, this disease is spreading.
And where are all the Republican women? Where’s Dana Loesch and Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin? What do they have to say about this?
dance around in your bones
Ok, whole site is borked.
I’mma gonna re-boot and try again.
Quicksand
Are we really talking about vaginas here?
More like assholes, the lot of them.
dance around in your bones
Ok, toda esta bien ahorita – por el momento.
But I am still threatening to re-boot at any moment. You have been forewarned….bwahahaha!
different-church-lady
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
Robin G.
When are we going to get animated GIFs in the comments? I’ve got a couple excellent ones for this.
mistermix
I don’t know if politics can ever get any better than “The tubes are spastic.”
Svensker
The tubes are spastic.
Hokee dokee. You get down with your bad self, doc. Outta sight!
Mnemosyne
Um, I’m pretty sure that Jane Roe never claimed she wanted to have an abortion because she had been raped, unless that was a claim she made after she became born again and turned against her own court case. WTF?
Quicksand
And it’s interesting these assholes are all focusing on some unexplained “failure to fertilize” mechanism, no matter how implausible.
Because any physiological stress/hormonal/immuno reaction that might take place later would be OMG SELF ABORTION and we can’t have that – we’re running for office, for Pete’s sake!
different-church-lady
@Chris T.: The uterus is not a big truck! It’s a series of tubes! It’s a series of tubes! And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled!
piratedan
ohhhh so in this case a woman’s vagina, during rape, tightens up and offers no purchase to a man’s seed thereby/ipso facto meaning that she is less likely to become pregnant… so in many ways, it’s just like a wingnut’s brain… which also seizes up and doesn’t offer purchase to ideas that have their origin in common sense or science…
Spaghetti Lee
“Hey babe, your tubes look pretty spastic. How about a drink?”
The Dangerman
“The tubes are spastic?!”
OK, roger, Willke.
debbie
As much as I’m enjoying these clowns burying themselves further everytime they open their mouths, I wish this wasn’t burying the Dead Sea swim story.
owlbear1
What the ignorant shit-stains are saying is that any pregnancy that results from a rape means the victim must have actually enjoyed it or she wouldn’t have become pregnant.
El Cid
Even better — the 1972 study oft cited by these freakazoids is based upon bullshit ‘experiments’ run at Nazi concentration camps.
I’m sure both sides regularly cite pseudo-science based upon Nazi concentration camp ghouls.
Southern Beale
Here’s something funny. The fetus that was on Todd Akin’s new website is now suddenly … gone.
Irony.
Robin G.
@different-church-lady:
Which is a really good reason to have an abortion!
Stillwater
“The tubes are spastic.”
Huh? Christ, does this guy have a degree? Of any kind?
If this is the level of discourse that conservatives understand, they should just admit they have no right to make policy.
Felinious Wench
@El Cid: I’m seriously going to throw up now.
Mnemosyne
@El Cid:
I … I have so many snarky things I could say that my brain has actually gone into overload.
Among which … Nazi death camps had a 100 percent reliable way of detecting ovulation but we don’t have that method today? None of the other stressors of living in a death camp — like, say, surviving on a starvation diet — could possibly have affected ovulation?
Also, too, fuck anyone who uses the results of those bogus experiments. What’s next, citing Mengele’s experiments where he sewed fraternal twins together to prove … something?
El Cid
@Felinious Wench: Make sure and measure your ovulation after you throw up, that way we can argue that instead of abortions, women just need access to disgusting and depressing news on the Republican freaks just outside the gates of government power.
El Cid
@Mnemosyne: I also suspect that the Nazis didn’t fully fill in their human subjects form and disclosure information, and also their experiment protocols and safeguards may not have been subject to department review.
Soonergrunt
@Southern Beale: One wonders if it was…aborted.
CarolDuhart2
@El Cid: Oh my God. Nazi “Science”. I thought it was inherited folklore. But using Nazi “Science”? Ugly and cruel.
Roger Moore
@El Cid:
Hey, if you can’t trust Josef Mengele, et. al. for your medical research, who can you trust?
El Cid
@CarolDuhart2: Hey, you know, we need to have more civil discourse, so, while some say that the Nazis were evil and should be out of consideration for use as references to concentration camp experiments, many others feel that they find valuable information. We need to teach the controversy.
El Cid
@CarolDuhart2: Hey, you know, we need to have more civil discourse, so, while some say that the Nazis were evil and should be out of consideration for use as references to concentration camp experiments, many others feel that they find valuable information. We need to teach the controversy.
jl
@CarolDuhart2:
‘ Oh my God. Nazi “Science”. ‘
Even better than that, irrelevant Nazi “Science”. You can’t beat that when you want to support an argument with evidence.
Mnemosyne
@El Cid:
Turns out that when you have doctors with a large pool of experimental subjects, no legal or ethical boundaries, and a lot of time on their hands, you get a whole lot of shit science. Who’da thunk it?
Mnemosyne
FYWP!
RedKitten
Yup. A woman is “uptight” while being raped. But hey, being shown her place in the world should teach her a lesson, right Doc?
Seriously, guys. Your country is beginning to frighten the fuck out of me.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
There are lots of things you can do if you’re allowed to kill your subjects as part of the study.
Birthmarker
@owlbear1: This is the real lede to the whole sordid story, owlbear. If one isn’t tight, then it is not rape. You slut.
CarolDuhart2
@El Cid: Controversy is right. But what is really scary is that not only the source dubious ethically, but scientifically sketchy. But because it has the patina of science, some people will believe it to the detriment of survivors.
Even history refutes it. Go back a few generations-and there were a lot of 14-16 year old mothers who “had” to get married. There’s Jefferson’s mistress and his kids-slavery was certainly stressful even if you were a house slave-you never knew if you would get sold simply because he was tired of you and if you refused-God only knew what would happen. But there were children anyway despite the “stress”.
I remember Wilke very well. I went to a Catholic School in the 1970’s in Cincinnati, when he was a local activist. The school actually had assemblies where he came to speak. If there was any science mentioned, I missed it. It was all propaganda. Even back then I was pro-choice-I just felt that the state should stay out of it and let each person’s conscience decide.
Patricia Kayden
Dr. Willke is a quack. I feel sorry for any woman who had him as her primary physician.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
Well, yes, but there’s really no reliable way to determine ahead of time if a woman was going to ovulate and it was time to put them in the fake gas chamber, so the “experiment” is totally bogus from the start. This is why Natural Family Planning (NFP) is only 60% reliable even when you take your temperature and check your mucus every morning without fail.
Obviously, you can slaughter the women to figure out afterwards if there’s an ovum there, but that doesn’t prove that there would have been an ovum otherwise.
Yes, I’m getting bogged down in the Nazis’ lack of scientific method and their poorly constructed experiments, but whatever else they were doing, it sure as fuck wasn’t science.
Mike in NC
@El Cid: Of course the Nazis opposed intrusive big government and it’s onerous stifling regulations.
Caz
Hmm, that’s actually an interesting theory by the good doctor. I wonder if there are any studies out there about stress reducing a woman’s fertility. If so, then he may have a point. I’m sure it can’t totally shut down the fertility, but I can see stress, especially the great stress of a rape, reducing her chances of getting pregnant. It makes a bit of sense actually.
Although I doubt any of you care about the reality of it. As long as it’s a totally retarded statement, you’ll continue to run with it, so just shoo-shoo away any reasonable theories that might be worth looking into because they might detract from your vicious attacks of this R candidate.
Oh, and I like how the liberals have now tied this retarded statement by someone that nobody in the country knows who the hell he is to Romney. It has nothing to do with Romney, but you all have your own 6 degrees of separation to tie any craziness to Romney. He knew a dude who knew a dude who knew a dude who attended a conference where a dude spoke, and that dude introduced Romney at a speech in bumfuck.
Both parties are conspiring to keep the elite ruling class on top of an ever growing lower class and striving to control the lower class entirely. And you’re letting it happen because you think the democrats are really different than the republicans and somehow hope and change are enough motivation for you to vote for whomever they put in front of you. Pathetic useful idiots.
Hypatia's Momma
There is also the Bill Napoli version of “legitimate rape”. (comment #23 in the transcription)
JoyfulA
A general practitioner with gynecological training is a general practitioner. All medical students get a little training in gynecology, a little training in dermatology, a little training in cardiology. . . .
tarylcabot
Something on the lighter side to share.
http://www.popehat.com/2012/08/21/taylor-ferrara/
Some Guy
@owlbear1: That is pretty much it, yes. What I find especially weird, among all the very, very weird, is that someone like Willke or Akin would put so much stock in the supposed desire of the woman. Really, is desire the trigger for fertilization from their point of view? Or, more accurately, know-nothing misogynist motherfuckers ideas about female desire trigger fertilization?
WTF?
Mnemosyne
@Caz:
You mean other than the one done in Nazi death camps that the doctor quoted in his “research”?
I’m kinda guessing that if you have to turn to Nazi research to support your claims, there’s not a whole lot of legitimate studies out there supporting you.
You mean the guy that Romney made this statement about?
Gosh, I can’t imagine how we could possibly tie a guy that Romney knows to Romney through statements that Romney made about the guy. It’s so unfair, amirite?
Some Guy
@JoyfulA: Sure, and I am not saying this is your point, but one does not need any medical training, just 9th grade biology, to know that Akin is full of shit. Seriously, just watch NOVA’s Miracle of Life and you will know that is bullshit.
Yutsano
@Caz: You never get laid do you?
burnspbesq
Oddly, almost none of the folks around here who have justifiably had conniptions over Akin’s horrifying and despicable comments about rape have had conniptions over George Galloway’s equally horrifying and despicable comments about rape.
I would be surprised by that, we’re it not for the fact that The Right Hon. Mr. Galloway, a member of the House of Commons, made his horrifying and despicable comments in support of Julian Assange’s ongoing campaign to remain above the law.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/british-lawmaker-criticized-over-rape-comments-made-in-defense-of-julian-assange/2012/08/21/2af0daf2-ebb6-11e1-866f-60a00f604425_story.html
owlbear1
@burnspbesq:
Wow, that is just as ignorant as the belief a rape victim who becomes pregnant must of have enjoyed it otherwise she wouldn’t have become pregnant.
Ruckus
This should put an end to any idea that just because one has a medical degree that there is automatically any degree of intelligence going on inside that melon. IOW there are moronic doctors. Of course that also could be said of some people holding Harvard degrees, college degrees in general, political office, or the odd millions of dollars.
College professor once stated that if common sense was properly named more people would have some of it.
Insomniac
Apparently women are all Bene Gesserit.
Pseudonym
@burnspbesq: Oh, is George Galloway now running for a seat in the U.S. Senate? A place where he would ostensibly represent my interests and have the power to pass laws that affect me?
I’d get upset at that, but I’m too busy getting upset at the abortion stance of the theocracy of Iranian mullahs (pro-tip: it’s more liberal than the Republican Party platform!) or the Syrian government’s attitude towards rape as population control. Obviously as long as these things exist we should shut up about American politicians who claim to represent us.
Dumb fuck.
Pseudonym
@Caz: It’s a totally invalid and offensive statement regardless of whether the rate of conception after rape is 50% or 200% of the rate after consensual intercourse. There’s nothing that matches Akin’s ridiculous scientific explanation, and his point in bringing it up was that pregnancies resulting from rape were actually or virtually nonexistent, which things like actual statistics readily disprove. Even if it were accurate, which it isn’t, how would that affect the argument about whether to allow abortion for those who did get pregnant from rape, whatever their numbers? There aren’t many of them, so who cares?
And even if the parties were equally plutocratic, which they aren’t, that still wouldn’t excuse Republicans’ violation of the bodily autonomy of women. It might make it an even stronger argument to vote Democratic, since on this issue where the parties really differ the Republican position is beyond the pale. But the parties aren’t equally plutocratic in the first place, so your baseline premise is invalid. Mitt Romney, a plutocrat if there ever was one, wants to give himself a tax rate of less than 1%. Show me where Obama wants to do that.
I’m sure you have the answer though, and will tell us fools how we should really be voting, once you finish jerking off to Paul Ryan’s surgically-enhanced budget porn.
Pseudonym
@Yutsano: Uh, are you arguing that if I never get laid either, my points are invalid? I like to think the reasons are different.
El Cid
@burnspbesq: OK, you got me, I’m a complete hypocrite for not having heard about this until now.
After this calling out, I yield, and condemn Galloway severely for his asshole remarks.
El Cid
I think it’s an interesting theory as to whether or not little men are running around in women’s sexy parts opening and closing doors to little rooms based on the commands sent by messages in vacuum tubes from the lady’s hysterical emotion centers to decide whether or not to permit the man sharing his bountiful seed with her (whether by her choice or not, surely we don’t have to account for this) to let his little men enter and plant those seeds in the tiny invisible garden hidden in those lady parts.
gocart mozart
Maybe he was just lost in the flood.
They’re breaking beams and crosses with a spastic’s reeling perfection
nuns run bald through Vatican halls pregnant, pleading immaculate conception
And everybody’s wrecked on Main Street from drinking unholy blood
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_the_Flood
gocart mozart
@El Cid:
I smell a remake of Being John Malkovich.
Interrobang
As someone who actually is spastic, I’d really like to aim a well-timed twitch right at Willke’s face. Same goes for the rest of the jerks out there who think “spastic” is just some kind of insult. Fuck all y’all.
For what it’s worth, genuine (dare I say “legitimate”)spasticity doesn’t actually seem to affect people’s ability to get pregnant, according to everything I’ve read, anyway.