During an interview for The Jaco Report on Fox 2 (KTVI) on Aug. 19 in St. Louis Mo., Republican Congressman Todd Akin uttered one of the most ignorant and insensitive statements by a politician and set off a national media frenzy.
“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [rape related pregnancy] is really rare,” Akin said. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
What is most disheartening about Akin’s beliefs on rape is that his use of the word “legitimate” to characterize rape reveals that he, like many others, is quick to attack the victim and question the validity of their claim.
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According to a study performed by the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology in 1996, an estimated 5 percent of rape victims, or 32,101 women, will end up pregnant as a result of being raped in the United States of America.
It is hard to decide which is more disgusting: that an estimated 32,201 women are victims of rape-related pregnancies each year, or that this number represents only 5 percent of the total number of women victimized by rape in the US annually.
Not only does this AJO&G study expose the error in Akin’s comment, but it pushes a very politically polarizing policy issue into the mainstream narrative. Should a woman be expected to give birth to the child conceived by rape and bear total responsibility, financial and otherwise?
Elected officials are expected to speak truth to the hard issues we face as a nation and when their claims prove false then the media has a responsibility to discredit him as an individual capable of a rational and logical thought process—he is currently a sitting US Congressman.
It is a fact that almost 650,000 women are raped in the US each year and if we as a society wish to lower the number of women who fall victim to rape and sexual assault each year, then as a community we need to come together and put the victims and their well-being first. It should be unacceptable for anyone to sully the victim’s reputation by implying they bear responsibility for the actions of a mentally inferior individual, who by any credible standard should be cast out of a society as advanced as the United States of America.
It’s appalling that women must live in a world where they fear that some males believe it is acceptable to force themselves upon them. The use of the word “male” is intentional; a real “man” would never consider violating a woman’s autonomy, or her body. And if legislators take away a woman’s right to choose what happens to their body, in the case of rape, incest and the mother’s health, then society as a whole is violating her autonomy and her body.
