Now that Todd Akin gave the press a little glimpse of what crawls around under the anti-abortion rock, they’re digging in. Both Sarah Kliff and Garance Franke-Ruta, as well as one of Josh Marshall’s readers, point out that the “rape prevents pregnancy” and “forcible rape” stuff is nothing new. Franke-Ruta:
The thing is, his comments were hardly some kind never-before-heard gaffe. Arguments like his have cropped up again and again on the right over the past quarter century and the idea that trauma is a form of birth control continues to be promulgated by anti-abortion forces that seek to outlaw all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest. The push for a no-exceptions anti-abortion policy has for decades gone hand in hand with efforts to downplay the frequency with which rape- or incest-related pregnancies occur, and even to deny that they happen, at all. In other words, it’s not just Akin singing this tune.
Part of my Catholic religious “education” at least 30 years ago was a gory film by some right-to-life physician full of fetuses and lies about the abortion procedure itself. It’s no surprise that some other quacks and quack-enablers are cooking up lies about rape and pregnancy.
Also, too: if stress hormones stop implantation during a rape, as the anti-abortionists claim, isn’t every rapist also an abortionist and therefore a murderer? I wonder if Akin supports capital punishment for rapists.