Opinion> Tom Rosshirt> Akin Undercutting His Cause

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Akin: Undercutting His Cause

It's not clear if Todd Akin understands the cause of the uproar he created. But if he does, he's pretending he doesn't.

Akin, the Missouri Senate candidate who used the phrase "legitimate rape" in explaining his views on abortion, said in a recent interview, "I talk about one word, one sentence, one day out of place, and all of a sudden, the entire establishment turns on you."

But it wasn't "one word" that triggered the storm; nor was it his position on abortion. It was a set of ideas he wasn't even asked about.

When asked about his view that abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape, all Akin needed to say was that he believes the baby is an innocent human being and should be allowed to live, even when conceived in the tragic circumstances of rape. Enough. Akin would have delivered a clear statement of his position. He would have been saying nothing people didn't already know about his views. He would have made no national news.

Instead, Akin introduced distinctions and ideas that were inessential to a pro-life position, and unluckily for him, also betrayed a mindset that horrified Republican leaders and triggered their efforts to force him out of the race.

Specifically, when asked about abortion in the case of rape, Akin said: "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 down that whole thing."

Let's try to unpack this.

First, Akin introduced the concept of "legitimate rape," which is a perverse phrase, since the Latin root of legitimate means "lawful." What Akin likely meant by "legitimate rape" is what he is willing to acknowledge as rape. With that distinction, he set himself up as a skeptical judge of rape claims, thus casting women as people prone to exaggeration who can't be trusted to know when they've been raped.

Then, to accompany his concept of "legitimate rape," Akin asserts a false science of the female reproductive system, declaring that "the female body has ways to try to shut down that whole thing."

Why invent that?

Because if you narrow the definition of rape, and then declare that under that definition, women who get raped don't get pregnant, then you've made the point that if you're pregnant, you weren't raped.

That is how Akin deals with one of the most widely supported arguments against his position — that the law should not require a woman to bear the baby of the man who raped her. In response, he obliquely answers that the whole question of whether abortion should be allowed in the case of rape is a false issue, because there really are no pregnant women who were raped — or very few.

This is not "one word." It's a mindset — and one that sent establishment Republicans into frantic damage control. These views are deeply insulting to women and utterly unnecessary to a pro-life position. So it threatens to discredit the pro-life agenda and the Republican Party along with it. This is why the Republicans are so keen to expel him. They're trying to say he's an exception. Interestingly though, Alex Castellanos, a Republican strategist responding to the Akin story, complained that "we have these recidivist ideas at the very core of our base."

Clearly, Castellanos doesn't think Akin is an exception.

For the moment, Akin is standing his ground and staying in the race. The Family Research Council is supporting him. The American Family Association is, as well, with their spokesperson gamely insisting that Akin was "absolutely right" that "real, genuine rape, a case of forcible rape," would be much less likely to lead to pregnancy.

Akin's supporters are citing his voting record in Congress and his efforts to advance the pro-life cause.

That's loyal of them, but also ironic. Whether advocates truly advance a cause is not just a question of the votes they cast or the speeches they make, but of how many people they persuade. Persuasion in the pro-life movement depends hugely on reassuring people that "pro-life" does not mean "anti-women." By that measure, Todd Akin has undercut his cause.

Tom Rosshirt was a national security speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and a foreign affairs spokesman for Vice President Al Gore. Email him at tomrosshirt@gmail.com. To find out more about Tom Rosshirt and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.