The news media are having a field day with some inartful comments by a Republican.
The New York Times writes: “Representative Todd Akin of Missouri said women’s bodies can block an unwanted pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape.””
I understand exactly what the man meant to say — that instances of women seeking abortions after rape are a tiny portion of all abortions, so tiny that they are statistically insignificant.
And what is “legitimate rape”? It is real rape. When a woman is forced by force to have sex against her will.
Why this tortured language? Because the word “rape” has become debased to mean any sex that a woman regrets. Say a woman gets drunk and goes to a frat house and has sex with a stranger? The next day, she might regret that sex and call it rape even though it was consensual at the time.
Here are the comments in context: “It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Mr. Akin said of pregnancies from rape. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”
