Lost in Akin's asinine comments...

... is the man's desire that a child conceived by rape not pay the price for the crime committed.

I've yet to find anyone who is defending what the man said and frankly, when you read his words, I don't see how anyone in his right mind can, however... what is now being lost in all of the hubub that's ensued since is the noble notion that the child in the womb should not suffer death.

Rebecca Hamilton is attempting to retrieve what has been lost:

Nothing revs up the combatants in this on-going war faster than combining the words “rape” and “abortion” in one sentence. That’s like sounding the bell for a group of race horses lined up at the starting gate.

The foot-in-mouth comments of a Missouri politician brought all this to the fore Monday. Here is what he said:

Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri who is running against Sen. Claire McCaskill, justified his opposition to abortion rights even in case of rape with a claim that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy.
“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

His comments are so absurd they would be funny if their impact wasn’t tragic. Morally callous biological nonsense coming out of the mouth of a pro-life politician makes pro life people sound like moral ingrates and idiots. His bizarre statement will be bandied about as proof of many of the prejudices that are used to destroy the pro-life movement’s credibility in public debate.

People we might otherwise convert to our cause will be persuaded that we are too heartless for them to listen to us. Every time someone like this exhibits such indifference to women, he makes it harder for the rest of us to convert the culture.

I’ve been fighting the battle to achieve justice for rape victims most of my adult life. I was one of the six founders of the original YWCA Rape Crisis Center here in Oklahoma. I’ve lost count of the number of pieces of legislation I’ve authored to either try to help rape victims or lock up their assailants. Along with the Oklahoma Coalition on Domestic Violence I helped put together the Statewide Day of Prayer for an End to Violence Against Women, the first such event that I know of in the country.

I can not contemplate the sheer indifference to the suffering of other people that rape represents. It wounds me when I try.

Despite all this, I have been hammered repeatedly by legal abortion advocates because I won’t kill a baby that is conceived in rape. They have gone so far as to claim that I want women to be beaten and raped, that I hate women.

...

Representative Akin is mistaken. Women do get pregnant from rape. And they suffer horribly. Rape is a monstrous, dehumanizing terror that frightens almost all women and can be a kind of psychological death for those who have to survive it. Rape is another of those mortal sins that, if unrepented, can send those who commit it to hell.

None of this affects the fact that it is wrong to kill a baby. From the moment of our conception, we are all unique and precious individuals, children of the living God. A baby is not a terror. A baby is a person.

I think there are a lot of good and compassionate people who honestly favor abortion in the case of rape because they care about the rape victim. I also believe that there are lot of equally good and compassionate people who oppose abortion in the case of rape because they care about the life of the baby.

If we are going to heal our culture and bring the abortion wars to a life-giving conclusion, we have to bring these two groups of good people together. We need to stop focusing on saving the baby OR the mother. We should focus instead on saving the baby AND the mother.

Both/And rather than Either/Or is indeed a noble cause well worth pursuing.  Aiken's inept and bumbling words fell well short of advancing that cause but it's clear this is where he was heading as the full quote shows:

 “It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. [Pregnancy] But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. You know, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”

The words in bold have been lost because of the idiotic words that came before them.

That's what is tragic and that's what Ms. Hamilton has communicated quite effectively.

It's probably too late for Akin to save his political career and perhaps that career isn't worth saving, I don't really know.

But saving babies shouldn't take a back seat to all of this.

And sadly, that noble cause has.

Comments

[Kenneth Jones]

Responding to Akin's statement, we have a specific remark from the Romney campaign the Rules Mitt Out. "...and a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape." - Amanda Henneberg, Romney Campaign Spokeswoman quoted from CNN's AC360 daily podcast 8/20/2012 timeslice 1:33.
That's procured abortion; that's intrinsically evil.

[robert]

I agree, Rick. One is either pro-choice or pro-life. There is no grey area on this one. If one is pro-life, that means abortion is murder whether it's rape or incest or whatever.