“Legitimate” Rape

A tea party Congressman has humiliated the Republican presidential candidate in the United States.

Emboldened by the responses that their ideology has been receiving in the U.S. presidential election campaigns, some members of the tea party are proving that on the path of reactionary extremism, things can always be taken just a little bit further. Republican Congressman Todd Akin, a Senate candidate in Missouri, wanted to make clear that he is against abortion, even in cases of rape. To justify it, he said that pregnancies from rape are “really rare,” and that “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” The comment has provoked a political outrage: Is there such thing as legitimate rape?

Apart from a curious and absolutely unscientific idea about how biology works, be it female or male, Akin’s statements have impacted Republican Mitt Romney’s candidacy like a dynamite blast. Until now, Romney has managed to not get bogged down in such muddy ground. He was quick to regard such statements as “insulting” and “inexcusable.” In the position of having to clarify in which cases a rape is “legitimate,” Akin chose to prevent greater damage by taking it back. But he really had meant it. In fact, he has extensively expressed his opinion in the tea party, according to which many women who allege to have been raped have not actually been raped and therefore do not deserve protection.

The incident shows where the American right tends to stand on the compass of ideological extremism. Although the elections are resolved in the center, the tea party candidates are trying to push the campaign to ultraconservative positions, and not just on moral questions. An example: Akin has brought into question whether Medicare, the public healthcare system for the poor and elderly, is constitutional.

His position on abortion is not so different from that of the vice presidential candidate, Paul Ryan, who also opposes it, even in cases of rape. Curiously, the same people who proclaim that neither the state nor anyone else has the right to interfere in the lives of Americans by obligating them to purchase health insurance, also think that they can interfere in the lives of women and obligate them to continue an unwanted pregnancy, even when it is the result of a rape.