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He should be publically reprimanded in the House, and he should be removed from the ballot as a candidate. I'm confident that even the toothless trogladytic Missouri Republican party leaders can find another sheep sodomizer to run against the incumbent Democrat.

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The Romney campaign quickly distanced itself from controversial comments about rape made by Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri, as the Democrats tried to make the remarks stick to the GOP ticket.

The Romney campaign flatly rejected the comments. "Gov. Romney and Congressman Ryan disagree with Mr. Akin's statement, and a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape," the campaign said in a brief statement. Romney, in an interview with the National Review, later called the comments "insulting" and "inexcusable."

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A woman's body may be unconsciously selective about sperm, allowing some men's to progress to pregnancy but killing off the chances of less suitable matches, an Australian researcher said Wednesday.

University of Adelaide professor Sarah Robertson said her research suggested that sperm contains "signalling molecules" that activate immunity changes in a woman so her body accepts it.

But some apparently healthy sperm failed to activate these changes, leading to the suggestion that the female system can be "choosy" about its biological mate, she said.

"It's rather like a two-way dance," Robertson said.

"The male provides information that increases the chances of conception and progression to pregnancy, but the female body has a quality control system which needs convincing that his sperm is compatible.

"That's where the dance can go wrong with some couples - if the male signals are not strong enough, or if the female system is too 'choosy'."

Robertson said sperm was more likely to fail if the woman had not previously been exposed to that man's semen for at least three months.

"We used to think that if a couple couldn't get pregnant, and the man's semen test was normal, the problem lay with the woman. But it appears this is not always the case," Robertson said.

The researchers plan to continue their work, which they hope will lead to improved treatments for infertility and miscarriages. http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/technology/women-s-bodies-choosy-about-sp
erm-1.487820

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However, your dislike does not overrule a woman's right to control her own body. And I'm stopping there, because I feel very strongly about this, not going to change my mind, and nothing I say will ever reach someone who thinks they can remove such a basic freedom from another human being.

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A campaign flub by a Republican Senate candidate shifted the political focus Monday to abortion and women's rights, as certain GOP nominee Mitt Romney and his conservative running mate faced a town hall-style meeting in New Hampshire.

The comment by Akin, who won Missouri's Republican primary to take on incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in November, drew immediate criticism from Democrats and some Republicans.

In Massachusetts, U.S. Sen. Scott Brown called for Akin to drop out of the Missouri Senate race because of the "outrageous, inappropriate and wrong" comments.

"There is no place in our public discourse for this type of offensive thinking," said Brown, a moderate Republican in a tough re-election battle against Democrat Elizabeth Warren. "Not only should he apologize, but I believe Rep. Akin's statement was so far out of bounds that he should resign the nomination for U.S. Senate in Missouri."

The Akin statement has forced the Romney campaign to distance itself from the GOP candidate in a key race, and also declare a definitive stance on one of the most volatile political issues of the day.

The issue is particularly sensitive for Ryan, a devout Catholic and staunch anti-abortion politician who has previously expressed opposition to abortion in all cases except when the life of the mother is endangered.

A Romney-Ryan campaign official, speaking on condition of not being identified, confirmed to CNN that Ryan's personal view opposes abortion in the case of rape. The campaign official said Ryan's stance differed with Romney's view, which was described in the statement Sunday and is the formal position of the GOP presidential ticket.

Republican colleagues also criticized Akin.

"As a pro-life conservative, a husband, and a father of two young women, I find Representative Akin's remarks to be offensive and reprehensible," said Rep. Denny Rehberg, a Republican candidate for a Montana seat in the U.S. Senate this year. "There is no such thing as a 'legitimate rape.' I condemn Representative Akin's statements in the strongest possible terms."

A spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Campaign, Brian Walsh, said Akin "did the right thing by quickly correcting the record and acknowledging that he misspoke."

The abortion focus comes in a week when the Romney team wanted to sharpen its focus on economic issues in the run-up to the Republican National Convention, which begins on August 27 in Tampa, Florida.

Now, Romney and Ryan will face questions about the volatile abortion issue and women's rights, giving President Barack Obama and Democrats an opportunity to further strengthen their advantage with women voters -- a demographic that already favors them, according to the polls.

Akin, a six-term U.S. congressman, touted his socially conservative values on the primary campaign trail.

He opposes abortion in all circumstances and has said he also opposes the morning after pill, which he equates to abortion.

McCaskill responded almost immediately to her opponent's comments Sunday, writing on Twitter: "As a woman & former prosecutor who handled 100s of rape cases, I'm stunned by Rep Akin's comments about victims this AM."

Akin was one of the first members of Congress to join the Tea Party Caucus in 2010 and has easily won re-election in recent years. The lawmaker has raised a notable $2.2 million this cycle, as of July 18.

Before the new controversy, the top nonpartisan political handicappers had rated the Missouri race a "toss-up."

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Take Christian Life Resources, an educational site, for example. It reprints an 1999 article ( http://www.christianliferesources.com/article/rape-pregnancies-are-rar
e-461]) on the topic that seeks to make the same distinction between categories of rape as did Akin, and for the same reason. Wrote John C. Willke -- a physician who in the 1980s and early 1990s was president of the National Right to Life Committee -- in the piece, originally published in Life Issues Connector:

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When pro-lifers speak of rape pregnancies, we should commonly use the phrase "forcible rape" or "assault rape," for that specifies what we're talking about. Rape can also be statutory. Depending upon your state law, statutory rape can be consensual, but we're not addressing that here .... Assault rape pregnancies are extremely rare.

.... What is certainly one of the most important reasons why a rape victim rarely gets pregnant, and that's physical trauma. Every woman is aware that stress and emotional factors can alter her menstrual cycle. To get and stay pregnant a woman's body must produce a very sophisticated mix of hormones. Hormone production is controlled by a part of the brain that is easily influenced by emotions. There's no greater emotional trauma that can be experienced by a woman than an assault rape. This can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy. So what further percentage reduction in pregnancy will this cause? No one knows, but this factor certainly cuts this last figure by at least 50 percent and probably more.

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An edited version of Willke's article appears on the website of Physicians for Life group under the headline, "Assault Rape Pregnancies Are Rare." The most medically ignorant paragraphs have been excised from this version of the story, though the headline has been strengthened to make the point plain.

The canard had been floating around the right long before Willke wrote his piece. In 1995, 71-year-old North Carolina state Rep. Henry Aldridge gained national notoriety after telling the N.C. House Appropriations Committee, "The facts show that people who are raped -- who are truly raped -- the juices don't flow, the body functions don't work and they don't get pregnant. Medical authorities agree that this is a rarity, if ever." ( http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Lawmaker-Says-Rape-Can-t-Cause-Preg
nancy-3036411.php])

His argument came during a debate over "a proposal to eliminate a state abortion fund for poor women," according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

In 1980, attorney James Leon Holmes wrote, in a letter arguing for a constitutional ban on abortion, "Concern for rape victims is a red herring because conceptions from rape occur with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami." ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32206-2004Jul6.html])

He later apologized for his comment and was successfully nominated to a federal judgeship by George W. Bush in 2004, the inside-Washington controversy over his remarks notwithstanding. Today he serves as the chief judge of the Eastern District of Arkansas.

In Pennsylvania, Republican state Rep. Stephen Freind asserted in 1988 that women rarely get pregnant from rape, because violent attacks cause temporary infertility. Reported the Philadelphia Daily News:

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The odds that a woman who is raped will get pregnant are "one in millions and millions and millions," said state Rep. Stephen Freind, R-Delaware County, the Legislature's leading abortion foe.

The reason, Freind said, is that the traumatic experience of rape causes a woman to "secrete a certain secretion" that tends to kill sperm.

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Efforts to outlaw abortion and legislatively narrow the definition of rape to only the most violent assaults go hand in hand, as abortion opponents believe rape exceptions to abortion bans will be exploited by women to obtain abortions in an environment in which it is otherwise outlawed. Rape, therefore, needs to be defined differently -- to be defined more narrowly and to be defined, most critically, as something that does not result in pregnancy.

You could see these conceptual gymnastics at work on the ground in Idaho earlier this year.

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The sponsor of an Idaho mandatory ultrasound bill, state Sen. Chuck Winder, made some highly controversial comments Monday during his closing arguments, suggesting women might falsely use rape as an excuse to obtain an abortion.

Just before the Idaho's Senate passed the bill, which requires woman to have an ultrasound prior to obtaining an abortion, opponents of the bill pointed out that it makes no exception for rape victims, incest victims or women in medical emergencies.

Winder, a Republican from Boise, responded to those concerns by raising the question of whether women understand when they have been raped.

"Rape and incest was used as a reason to oppose this," Winder said on the Senate floor. "I would hope that when a woman goes in to a physician with a rape issue, that physician will indeed ask her about perhaps her marriage, was this pregnancy caused by normal relations in a marriage or was it truly caused by a rape. I assume that's part of the counseling that goes on."

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The most prominent example of the peculiar effort to downplay rape in order to decrease access to abortion cropped up in the U.S. Congress earlier this year. Sponsored by New Jersey Republican Chris Smith, H.R. 3, the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," would have rewritten the rape exception in federal abortion-funding bans from the language in the Hyde Amendment. Henceforth, according to the bill, there would be exemptions only for something called "forcible rape." (Presumably, this is the same thing Willke called "assault rape" and Akin called "legitimate rape," as opposed to what Willke called "consensual" "statutory" rape.) After a public outcry, Smith retreated from his first draft of the bill and reinstituted the Hyde language, though an additional provision was added later to clarify that the bill will "not allow the Federal Government to subsidize abortions in cases of statutory rape." Akin and Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan were co-sponsors of the bill, along with 225 others. The bill passed the House with all Republicans and 16 Democrats voting for it, but then died in the Democrat-controlled Senate. President Obama had pledged to veto the bill. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/08/a-canard-that-will
-not-die-legitimate-rape-doesnt-cause-pregnancy/261303/

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They will attempt to distance themselves from the controversy.

But they can't.

They will even try to claim the whole conversation is a distraction from the "real issues."

And yet they never shy away from using this same conversation to fire up their base, or hurl attack ads or raise funds.

The truth is the "legitimate rape" comment made by U.S. Rep. Todd Akin -- as in pregnancy from "legitimate rape" is rare -- is not a GOP anomaly, but rather another disturbing glimpse into the viewpoint too many social conservatives have about women's health and reproductive rights. And if abortion is not among the "real issues," why is the GOP platform committee considering adding a ban, with no mention of exceptions ("GOP platform spoiler alert - no exception for rape, incest in abortion plank" http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/gop-pl
atform-spoiler-alert-no-exception-rape-incest-abortion-plank]), to this year's to-do list?

Last March, in a discussion in the Kansas House about whether women purchase separate abortion-only policies, Republican state Rep. Pete DeGraaf suggested women should plan ahead for rape the way he keeps a spare tire ( http://articles.kwch.com/2011-05-25/rights-groups_29584145]. A few weeks later, Indiana state Rep. Eric Turner, a Republican, said some women might fake being raped in order to get free abortions ( http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-03-31/news/29386489_1_strict-anti
-abortion-bill-incest-procedure]).

Former presidential hopeful Rick Santorum suggested doctors who perform an abortion on a woman who becomes pregnant from an attack should be thrown in jail

and this year suggested rape victims who become pregnant from an attack should be forced to keep the baby and "make the best out of a bad situation" ( http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1201/20/pmt.01.html]).

And we're to believe Akin is just a one-off.

Please.

More than 200 Republican members of Congress joined him in co-sponsoring House Resolution 3, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, when it contained language restricting the exception for federally funded abortions to "an act of forcible rape or, if a minor, an act of incest."

Forcible rape.

That's not too far from "legitimate rape"

So vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan can try to backpedal away from Akin as fast as he can, but his name is still on the record in support of that bill, with that language. He can say he's in line with Mitt Romney and would not ban abortions in the case of rape, but it's his name attached to House Resolution 212: Sanctity of Human Life Act, which would have done just that.

don't think for a second that social issues -- particularly abortion -- are not in the GOP's sights. Since the tea party helped pull the GOP back into power in 2010 -- under the guise of controlling government spending -- close to 1,000 anti-abortion bills have been introduced across the country. I can't think of anything approaching that number of bills with the goal of creating jobs in that same time span, can you?

At a Personhood USA "tele-town hall meeting" in December, Santorum, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry all said they would work to outlaw all abortions, regardless of the circumstances. You can fully expect a Republican Congress to move quickly to ban all abortions, regardless of circumstances.

And given that a would-be President Romney said, "I will protect a woman's right to choose," when he was running for Massachusetts governor in 2002, only to become an anti-abortion advocate while running for president, there's no telling which side of the issue he will fall on, on any given day.

Some social conservatives talk of protecting religious freedom, but what they are really seeking is a theocracy that places limits on freedom based on a version of Judeo-Christianity that fits their liking. That language is also being considered for the GOP's national platform. Some speak of fighting abortion because of their religious convictions and then belittle the trauma caused by rape.

They think they can make this controversy all about Akin, as if Ryan's legislative history is just going to disappear. As if DeGraaf never suggested women should plan ahead for rape the way he keeps a spare tire. As if none of us are paying attention.

But we are. http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/21/opinion/granderson-gop-rape-abortion/ind
ex.html?hpt=hp_t1

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