[Vision2020] Just Think No

[Art Deco]

 [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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August 21, 2012
Just Think No By MAUREEN
DOWD<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/maureendowd/index.html>

WASHINGTON

There’s something trying about an unforgiving man suddenly in need of
forgiveness.

Yet Todd Akin is right. He shouldn’t have to get out of the United States
Senate race in Missouri simply for saying what he believes. He reflects a
severe stance on abortion that many in his party embrace, including the new
vice presidential candidate.

“I talk about one word, one sentence, one day out of place, and, all of a
sudden, the entire establishment turns on you,” Representative Akin
complained to the conservative radio talk-show host Dana Loesch on Tuesday
as he spurned pleas from Mitt Romney and other G.O.P. big shots to abort
his bid. He continued: “They just ran for cover at the first sign of any
gunfire, and I think we need to rush to the gunfire.”

He’s right again. Other Republicans are trying to cover up their true
identity to get elected. Even as party leaders attempted to lock the crazy
uncle in the attic in Missouri, they were doing their own crazy thing down
in Tampa, Fla., by reiterating language in their platform calling for a
no-exceptions Constitutional amendment outlawing abortion, even in cases of
rape, incest and threat to the life of the mother.

Paul Ryan, who teamed up with Akin in the House to sponsor harsh
anti-abortion bills, may look young and hip and new generation, with his
iPod full of heavy metal jams and his cute kids. But he’s just a fresh face
on a Taliban creed — the evermore antediluvian, anti-women, anti-immigrant,
anti-gay conservative core. Amiable in khakis and polo shirts, Ryan is the
perfect modern leader to rally medieval Republicans who believe that Adam
and Eve cavorted with dinosaurs.

In asserting that women have the superpower to repel rape sperm, Akin
ratcheted up the old chauvinist argument that gals who wear miniskirts and
high-heels are “asking” for rape; now women who don’t have the presence of
mind to conjure up a tubal spasm, a drone hormone, a magic spermicidal
secretion or mere willpower to block conception during rape are “asking”
for a baby.

“The biological facts are perhaps inconvenient, but whether the egg meets
the sperm is a matter of luck or prevention,” says Dr. Paul Blumenthal, a
professor of obstetrics and gynecology who directs the Stanford Program for
International Reproductive Education and Services. “If wishing that ‘I
won’t get pregnant right now’ made it so, we wouldn’t need contraceptives.”

When you wish upon a rape.

Dr. Blumenthal is alarmed that Akin is a member of the House Committee on
Science, Space and Technology.

“What is very disturbing to me is that people like Mr. Akin who have
postulated this secret mechanism for avoiding pregnancy have developed
their own make-believe world of science based on entirely self-serving
beliefs of convenience or just ignorance,” he said. “I don’t think we want
these people to be responsible for the lives of others.”

* But, for all the Republican cant about how they want to keep government
out of the lives of others, the ultraconservatives are panting to meddle in
the lives of others.* Contrary to President Obama’s refreshing assertion
Monday that a bunch of male politicians shouldn’t be making health care
decisions for women, this troglodyte tribe of men and Bachmann-esque women
craves that responsibility.

“Next we’ll be trying to take away the vote from women,” lamented Alex
Castellanos, a Republican strategist who advised Romney in the 2008 race.
“How can we be the party of cool and make the generational leap forward
when we have these recidivist ideas at the very core of our base?”

Akin defended the incendiary comment he made on a Missouri TV show — “If
it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole
thing down” — by saying he wasn’t talking about rapists being legitimate,
but rather “false claims” of rape, “like those made in Roe versus Wade.” He
said he meant to say “forcible rape.” Oh, that’s ever so much better.

Akin, Ryan et al. have made it their business to designate which rapes are
legitimate, joining up to push Orwellian legislation last year to narrow
the definition of rape to “forcible rape.”

And Mitt, who was for abortion rights (except for Mormons he counseled)
before he was against them, in his last presidential bid went after the
endorsement of Dr. John Willke, a former president of the National Right to
Life Committee and father of the inanity about rape victims being able to
turn back sperm if they put their mind and muscles to it.

The nutty doctor hypothesized: “This is a traumatic thing. She’s, shall we
say, she’s uptight.” Adding, “She is frightened, tight, and so on. And
sperm, if deposited in her vagina, are less likely to be able to fertilize.
The tubes are spastic.”

Akin is right in saying this race should be about “who we are as a people.”

It should also be about who they are. They are people who want to be in
your life, deep in your life, even when they say they don’t.

-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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