One Woman's Reaction: US Representative Todd Akin on Rape and Pregnancy

If Mr. Akin had himself been raped, he might be able to sympathize, but that is another thing all together. After all, a raped man has been hurt and humiliated, but the semen placed inside his innermost, private places by his rapist eventually drains off, leaving the horrifying memory and a possibility of disease, but most assuredly not a 9-month pregnancy.

Later, in an effort to cover his “legitimate” blunder, Akin said he was referring to the fact that sometimes women claim rape where none has occurred. And later yet, he said that what he really meant was “forcible” rape.

Dear Mr. Akin: Please look up the word “rape” in your dictionary. You will discover that it has several meanings, but that in the meaning related to sex, “force” is an essential part of the definition. All rape is “forcible” rape. Un-forcible rape does not exist: the correct term for that is consensual intercourse, which bears no relation to this discussion.

No man can empathize with what it is to be pregnant, with all its glorious moments and scary feelings and the physical drain that a growing fetus places on the body, never mind the uncertainness, anxiety, and pain of the delivery itself or the hormonal highs and lows thereafter. Certainly, fathers can be proud and helpful and full of anticipation and understanding that a woman is enduring a lot for the sake of their unborn child. And for sure fathers can love their offspring, too — but again, unless they are female, they cannot fully grasp what it is to carry a child to term. Nor can they begin to understand the agony of what it must be to carry the child of a rape.

That the collection of cells forcibly placed into a woman’s body by her rapist may possibly fertilize an egg is demonstrably true. Certainly the child, if those cells are allowed to develop into one, is an innocent victim of the rape. But immediately after a rape, for others to weigh the potential of those cells against a living, breathing violated woman, is excessively cruel.

She may, trusting to the power of nurture, choose to bear and rear such a child, or to put the infant up for adoption. Or she may choose to abort it. Surely that agonizing choice should be hers alone. The government has no business deciding it for her.

Isn’t it odd that the very people who keep saying we need to get the government out of our lives, at the same time condone legislation insisting that more than half the population needs its government to tell them what to do or not to do with their wombs?

It is hard to imagine being so smug that one could make the decision to abort or not to abort for someone else, someone whose beliefs or background or reasoning or agonizing you don’t know, nor ever will know. The instinctive response to that can only be: “Who the hell does he think he is?”

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One Woman's Reaction: US Representative Todd Akin on Rape and Pregnancy

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