Dead man walking

By Carl

You may recall that phrase from any number of movies where an inmate is under a death penalty and is about to be executed.

Politically, that's what Todd Akin (I think I spelled his name Atkins yesterday. I'm thinking about dieting.) is: a dead campaign walking.

Apology or no, Akin is pretty much at a standstill: if he continues his Senate run, there's no assistance to be found from establishment Republicans...you know, the money guys. If he quits, he winnows away into nothingness, which is an appropriate punishment for an ignorant obstusicle.

I did a little research yesterday to try to fathom what a "legitimate rape" constitutes. The best I could come up with was, well, disturbing: its an excuse to force women to keep babies even if they were impregnated against their will.

In a nutshell, there's a specious line of thinking that says a woman cannot get pregnant if she doesn't have an orgasm, that the ovaries will not release the egg for insemination.

This is what conservatives believe!

So if a woman is "really raped," she won't orgasm, so there will be no pregnancy, so no abortion. if she gets pregnant, it means she had an orgasm, therefore enjoyed the sex and probably invited it.

"The slut had it coming," in other words, quite literally. It doesn't matter that her husband battered her, breaking bones and clawing flesh. It doesn't matter that she was drunk in a bar (think of that Jodie Foster movie) and was trying to say no to her boyfriend. None of that matters if she gets pregnant.

Now, people can believe that (personally, I do not) but if you are going to believe it, then do us all a favor and don't sugarcoat it to make yourself feel better. If you really want to have no more abortions, even in the case of what you consider "not rape," then just say that and then suffer the consequences of being thought monstrous.

Because you are a monster. You are an inhuman freak and you deserve the condemnation and damnation of every person you come in contact with. But please, have the courage of your convictions and be honest with yourself first.

We in Blogtopia (© Skippy the Bush Kangaroo) focused on ridiculing the abortion stance here, but we get a window into something far deeper, far more disturbing about American society with this incident.

When a woman claims she is raped, her claims are discounted: her sexual past is thrown in her face, the amount of alcohol she imbibed is taken into account, how she dressed, her makeup and hair.

Are you starting to see what this line of thinking has wrought? If she's in sneakers and loose jeans and a sweatshirt, wearing a baseball cap and walking down a dark alley when a provable stranger rapes her, that's about the only time she'll ever truly stand a chance of pressing a claim and then there will still be these egregious defenses thrown at her character.

Any variance on that theme only ramps up the horror show, the terrorism of our society. And mind you, this is a mainstream thought process which either engendered Akin's misinformation or was a direct descendant, a bastard child, thereof.

It's disgusting and deserves the full airing it probably will not get. But I will not let it go unnoticed. I hope you won't, either.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind)