“Life Of The Party”: Todd Akin, A Fine Representative Of The Republican Party Of Today
uesday morning, on a tip from American Bridge 21st Century, a liberal PAC that conducts opposition research on Republicans, I clipped and posted videos for Slate’s Double X blog demonstrating some of the paranoid flights of fancy and routine misogyny that have peppered Todd Akin’s speeches on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Akin, who is challenging Democrat Claire McCaskill for her Missouri Senate seat, became infamous after he said that, based on no science whatsoever, pregnancies rarely happen in the case of “legitimate rape.” That remark was hardly out of character; he is indeed every inch the misogynist and denier of reality that his comment suggests.
The videos prove that Akin is wholly the product of the movement conservatism that controls the Republican Party. While he may be a bit freer of tongue than many Republicans, his basic premises don’t differ from theirs: Feminism is evil. Reality can be denied if it conflicts with ideology. Conservatives are the real victims of this shifting, politically correct America, not the various groups of people they oppress and demonize.
In one of the clips, Akin goes on at length comparing abortion providers to terrorists:
The terrorist is a terrorist, and what does that mean? Well, it means he wants to compel you into doing something because you’re so afraid of him. That’s not very similar, is it, to what we believe, that God gives people the right to life and then the right to liberty. The right to liberty is to be able to follow your own conscience without being terrorized by some opponent. So it is no big surprise that we fight the terrorists, because they are fundamentally un-American. And yet we have terrorists in our own culture called abortionists.
Akin is right that terrorists are people who use violence and the threat of it to try to bend people to their political will. The FBI defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” Of course, his accusation that this is what abortion providers do makes no sense. Abortion providers don’t commit acts of violence to get their way. They don’t try to intimidate or coerce anyone. They simply hang out a shingle and invite women who want abortions to come to them. Abortion providers, after all, work in the service of choice.
That doesn’t mean the abortion debate is free of terrorism or other forms of harassment and coercion by those who want people to comply with their political demands. Except that Akin has the roles reversed. Far from being the terrorists in this equation, abortion providers are the victims. Every week, providers in this country have to endure crowds harassing them in front of their clinics under the guise of “protest.” Many providers are stalked by anti-choicers. Their homes are targeted by picketers. “Wanted” posters with their pictures and identifying information have been distributed among anti-choice activists. One doctor who indicated that she planned to provide abortion in the future faced death threats. Clinics are vandalized, broken into, and set on fire. A clinic landlord had to deal with anti-choicers stalking his daughter at her middle school. Doctors have been injured and killed at the hands of right-wing terrorists, most recently in 2009 when George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country who performed late-term abortions, was shot to death at his church in Kansas.
Such coercive actions unfortunately work. Tiller’s clinic shut its doors after he was assassinated. Just this week, a Brooklyn abortion clinic closed because the harassment from anti-choice obsessives had become too much for both the workers and the patients. A study published this month in the journal Contraception demonstrates a correlation between anti-choice harassment and state legislatures passing abortion restrictions. While no causal relationship has been determined, the study does show that aggressive street tactics contribute to an overall atmosphere that makes it hard for providers to operate. As Akin noted later in his remarks, the number of abortion providers has declined in this country. It’s not because they are terrorists, as Akin supposes. It’s because they’re terrorized.
Akin cannot be unaware of this. He has admitted to being arrested for illegally blockading a clinic and trying to physically force women not to exercise their legal right to abortion, which means he was using unlawful force. The victims? Abortion providers and their patients. In 1995, Akin openly praised the 1st Missouri Volunteers, who were headed for a time by Tim Dreste, an anti-abortion activist who led a series of invasions of abortion clinics in 1988. There’s no reason to participate in and support aggressive and often illegal actions against abortion providers unless your intention is to scare them out of business.
Akin’s move of flipping the role of victim and oppressor may sound extreme, but it’s another example of what has become one of the most common rhetorical strategies on the right. In the topsy-turvy world of right-wing rhetoric, billionaires are hapless victims mercilessly abused by the working class. White people are victimized by affirmative action and black people demanding “reparations.” Men are marginalized by evil “feminazis,” and gay people aren’t asking for rights but are trying to destroy “traditional marriage.” In the funhouse mirror of reality that is the conservative worldview, why not just take it to the next level and reverse the role of the terrorist and the victim? The problem with Akin is not that he’s an extremist but that he’s a fine representation of the Republican Party of today.
By: Amanda Marcotte, The American Prospect, October 2, 2012
“Akin Unmasks The Pro-Life Movement”: “Slutty Women Will Do Anything To Avoid Facing The Consequences Of Their Actions”
The myth that women can’t get pregnant from rape stems from basic assumptions anti-choicers make about women.
If you’re going to slander the estimated 32,000 women a year who become pregnant after being raped, it’s probably not wise to do it on a Sunday, when it will lead the next week’s news coverage. Republican nominee for Missouri Senate Todd Akin chose not to follow this bit of wisdom, instead declaring in a television interview yesterday that women can’t get pregnant from rape.
“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.”
For people who don’t follow the anti-choice movement closely, this statement might be a stunner for the simple reason that it makes no biological sense; a rapist’s sperm swims as well as a non-rapist’s. But for those of us who do, it’s no surprise. The myth that “real” rapes don’t result in pregnancy is widespread among anti-choicers—and not just the fringe (Akin, for instance, used to be on the board of Missouri Right to Life). You can see a variation of this myth at the anti-choice website Abortion Facts:
To get pregnant 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 which 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.
Akin’s comment should serve as a reminder that despite its sentimentality surrounding the fetus, the anti-choice movement is motivated by misogyny and ignorance about human sexuality. In this case, what underlies the rape-doesn’t-get-you-pregnant myth is the notion that sex is shameful and that slutty women will do anything—even send an innocent man to jail to kill a baby—in order to avoid facing the consequences of their actions.
You can see this logic play out broadly in discussions about rape as well as abortion. The most common defense in rape cases is that the victim consented to sex and only “cried rape” in order to seem less promiscuous. The claim, of course, is nonsensical. Why would a woman trying to put a one-night stand behind her invite grilling by detectives and defense attorneys? Why would someone so concerned about maintaining the illusion of purity subject her sex life to examination by a crowd of jurors? That the myth persists nonetheless goes a long way to explaining why we have such low rape conviction rates. When it comes to abortion, anti-choice activists accuse women going into abortion clinics of taking the easy way out, as if raising an unwanted child is the rightful price of having sex.
While most everyone can see the absurdity of Akin’s comments, fewer pick up on the deeper problem of “rape exceptions” to abortion bans. When journalists and politicians refer to banning abortions except in the case of rape, they are assuming that there’s a way to construct abortion policy that allows women who “deserve” abortions to get them while preventing those dirty girls who consented to sex from having them. This is simply not the case.
We know from research that even with a rape exception, most rape victims who seek an abortion will be denied. Take Medicaid, for instance, which will not cover an abortion unless the patient is a rape victim. Research by Ibis Reproductive Health, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving women’s access to reproductive services, has shown that only 37 percent of women who qualified for rape exceptions got the necessary funding for their abortions. Between the onerous paperwork demands to demonstrate that one is, to use Akin’s term, a “legitimate” rape victim and bureaucrats who are understandably anxious about making exceptions even when they’re called for, doctors and patients simply found it impossible to get the funding they need.
In this light, what’s surprising is not that an anti-choice politician accused pregnant rape victims of lying to cover their shame, but that anti-choice politicians manage to avoid saying similar things with regularity. Unfortunately, we live in a political climate where statements like Akin’s will likely be dismissed as a gaffe instead of serving as an opportunity to discuss what motivates such myths. Such is the nature of our shallow, scandal-driven media: It points our heads in the direction of deeper truths, but moves to the next story before we can take the time to see them.
By: Amanda Marcotte, The American Prospect, August 20, 2012
“The New Wedge Issue”: It’s A Scary Time To Be A Woman
Last Friday, the Obama campaign released an ad in several swing states attacking Mitt Romney for his stance on abortion. “It’s a scary time to be a woman—Mitt Romney is just so out of touch,” says a woman named Jenni. A narrator explains that Mitt Romney opposes requiring insurance coverage for contraceptives, supports overturning Roe v. Wade, and once backed a bill that would outlaw all abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. The ad concludes: “We need to attack our problems, not a woman’s choice.”
In recent elections, presidential candidates have been wary of diving into explosive abortion politics; in 2008, only $4 million was spent on abortion-related advertising, compared with $39 million on budget-related ads or $88 million on environmental ones. It’s an issue the public remains divided on. According to Gallup, the proportion of Americans identifying as “pro-choice” hit a record low of 41 percent this year, while those describing themselves as “pro-life” hovered around 50 percent. “The minute you take positions on the abortion issue, there are a lot of people you’re alienating,” explains Susan Carroll, a Senior Scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “Usually, candidates try to run away from the issue.” So why is the Obama campaign running toward it?
One reason might be to remind voters of the “War on Women.” Republican lawmakers’ and presidential candidates’ ugly policy proposals this spring—forcing vaginal ultrasounds, defunding Planned Parenthood, weakening the Violence Against Women Act, fighting access to contraception—created an opportunity for Democrats to shave off women voters from the GOP. President Obama had the support of fewer than half of women under 50 in February; by April he was polling above 60 percent, outgunning Romney 2-to-1. But the gap has narrowed in recent months. The Obama ad serves both to remind women of the GOP’s recent history and to tie Romney to the attack on reproductive rights.
Still, the question remains why the Obama campaign didn’t stick to safer ground, focusing on the GOP’s attacks on contraception or maternity care—both broadly unpopular. The answer lies in the Republican Party’s shift to the right. A decade ago, between 30 and 40 percent of Republicans identified as pro-choice. This May, that number was a scant 22 percent. It’s hard to know whether that’s the result of Republicans changing their minds about abortion, or pro-choice respondents ceasing to identify as Republicans. But the result is the same: The party is increasingly uniform in its opposition to abortion.
This, in turn, has opened up an opportunity for Democrats. For most Americans, the abortion question is not all-or-nothing—it’s about where one draws the line. Opinion polling on abortion is highly sensitive to phrasing; despite a majority of the country identifying as “pro-life,” polls also consistently show that a majority of respondents supports access to abortion in at least some circumstances. Politicians have been walking this tightrope for years—“I’m personally pro-life but believe in a woman’s right to choose”; “I believe the issue should be left up to the states to decide”; “Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.” With the GOP moving further to the right, a wider space has opened for Democrats to pick up abortion moderates. As Ed Kilgore wrote in Washington Monthly earlier this year, if a woman’s right to choose continues to be eroded around the country, it could become more likely that the quiet pro-choice sentiments of the American majority will emerge as a political force.
Romney, meanwhile, is feeling the squeeze. His campaign has disputed the charge that the former Massachusetts governor wants to ban abortion in all circumstances, pointing to remarks he’s made that he supports exceptions for rape, incest, and maternal health. But Romney is limited in how forcefully he can counter the Obama team’s claims lest he upset the conservative base. It’s the basic problem Romney faces across the board: He must appease absolutists while still appearing reasonable enough for the general election. It’s a balancing act the Republican Party’s standardbearers are going to have to struggle with as long as the party champions ideological purity.
By: Daniel Townsend, The American Prospect, August 2, 2012
“Caught In Another Lie”: Mitt Romney Invested In Medical Waste Firm That Disposed Of Aborted Fetuses
Mitt Romney’s Bain problem just got a lot worse.
According to a new report by Mother Jones’ David Corn, Bain Capital made a $75 million investment in Stericycle — a medical waste disposal firm that has been attacked by right wing groups for disposing of aborted fetuses — while Romney was still actively involved in the company in 1999. This news is sure to upset social conservatives, and it also directly contradicts Romney’s account of when he left Bain.
Romney’s connection to Stericycle was first reported in January by The Huffington Post, but the story never gained traction because Bain Capital claimed that Romney left the firm to run the Winter Olympics in February of 1999 — meaning that he had nothing to do with the deal. According to SEC documents unearthed by Corn, however, Romney was still actively involved in the firm’s leadership through the end of that year:
The SEC filing lists assorted Bain-related entities that were part of the deal, including Bain Capital (BCI), Bain Capital Partners VI (BCP VI), Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors (a Bermuda-based Bain affiliate), and Brookside Capital Investors (a Bain offshoot). And it notes that Romney was the “sole shareholder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of BCI, BCP VI Inc., Brookside Inc. and Sankaty Ltd.”
The document also states that Romney “may be deemed to share voting and dispositive power with respect to” 2,116,588 shares of common stock in Stericycle “in his capacity as sole shareholder” of the Bain entities that invested in the company. That was about 11 percent of the outstanding shares of common stock. (The whole $75 million investment won Bain, Romney, and their partners 22.64 percent of the firm’s stock—the largest bloc among the firm’s owners.) The original copy of the filing was signed by Romney.
Another SEC document filed November 30, 1999, by Stericycle also names Romney as an individual who holds “voting and dispositive power” with respect to the stock owned by Bain. If Romney had fully retired from the private equity firm he founded, why would he be the only Bain executive named as the person in control of this large amount of Stericycle stock?
As Corn points out, the SEC documents have implications that reach farther than Stericycle. The Romney campaign repeated its assertion that Romney left Bain in February 1999 when rebutting a recent Washington Post story reporting that Bain acquired companies that outsourced jobs. According to these SEC filings, that is not true.
The issue here is not that Romney was investing with a company that disposed of aborted fetuses; after all, abortion is legal, something must be done with the medical waste produced by them, and according to Corn the investment was quite profitable for Bain and its investors.
The issue is that Romney has once again been caught in a lie about his past, and once again he has given voters a reason to be suspicious over his record at Bain — which he’s used as the central thesis of his campaign.
Romney is already having a difficult time talking about his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, given that he is now running against the signature achievement of his term. If voters reject his version of the Bain Capital story as well, then it is hard to see what his campaign’s message could be moving forward.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, July 2, 2012
“Obeying The Supreme Court Is Optional”: Rand Paul Suggests Congress Can Simply Ignore Roe v. Wade
Earlier today, the National Review’s mailing list distributed an email (which can also be found here) signed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), which called for Congress to pass a law effectively rendering a binding Supreme Court decision a nullity:
Working from what the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade, pro-life lawmakers can pass a Life at Conception Act and end abortion using the Constitution instead of amending it. . . . Signing the Life at Conception Act petition will help break through the opposition clinging to abortion-on-demand and get a vote on this life-saving bill to overturn Roe v. Wade.
A Life at Conception Act declares unborn children “persons” as defined by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, entitled to legal protection.
It’s not entirely clear why Paul believes Congress has this power, and the email he signed does not provide a fully developed legal argument making the case for such an law. Instead, it appears to argue that Congress can simply grant full legal “personhood” status to fetuses under the 14th Amendment because Roe left open “the difficult question of when life begins.” This is not a correct reading of the Roe decision, however. The Roe opinion is unambiguous that “the word ‘person,’ as used in the 14th Amendment, does not include the unborn.”
Whether one agrees with this opinion or not, Congress does not have the power to flout the Supreme Court’s constitutional decisions simply because it does not like them. As ThinkProgress explained when a similar proposal was floated last year by Princeton Professor Robert George, “[i]n City of Boerne v. Flores, the Court held that Congress is not allowed to simply declare that the 14th Amendment means whatever they want it to mean and then use that declaration to pass enforcement legislation — Congress can only pass laws enforcing existing 14th Amendment rights.”
Just as importantly, there is something very bizarre about a conservative stalwart like Rand Paul insisting that obeying the Supreme Court is optional at exactly the same time conservatives are trying to impose much of their policy agenda upon the nation by judicial decree. Presumably, Paul would be outraged if President Obama simply refused to obey a Supreme Court decision striking down part of the Affordable Care Act or if elections officials were to ban corporations from trying to buy elections despite the justices’ decision in Citizens United. Yet, if Roe v. Wade is as optional as Paul appears to think that it is, than there is no reason why Obama should feel obliged to obey conservatives’ pet decisions either.
By: Ian Millhiser, Think Progress, May 14, 2012
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