Missouri Republican Candidate for US Senate: “Legitimate Rape” Victims Don’t Get Pregnant.

Todd Akin

Where does the Tea Party find these freakazoids? Missouri Representative Todd Akin is the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, running against current Senator Claire McCaskill. This insane, anti-science knuckle-dragger claims that if a rape is “legitimate,” a woman’s body can magically prevent pregnancy. And he claims he got his information from doctors!

Today Akin appeared on a local St. Louis TV show, The Jaco Report. The host, Chris Jaco asked him if there were any circumstances under which Akin believes abortion would be acceptable. In response Akin went into a bizarre dissertation about how Americans’ believe in the value of life is what makes this country great. For example, look at the firefighters who rescued people on 9/11 and didn’t even ask for their IDs. And then there are the American soldiers who were willing to rescue wounded people–even if they were only Iraqis.

Finally, Jaco broke in and pressed Akin on the abortion question. Akin said he thought abortion should be allowed in the case of a tubal pregnancy where the child could not survive, if the woman’s life were in danger. But not in cases of 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.”

Akin said that even in the worst-case scenario — when the supposed natural protections against unwanted pregnancy fail — abortion should still not be a legal option for the rape victim.

“Let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work, or something,” Akin said. “I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

Here’s the video:

According to TPM,

A 1996 study by the American Journal of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found “rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency” and is “a cause of many unwanted pregnancies” — an estimated “32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year.”

Naturally, this isn’t the only strange idea Akin has about rape and women’s behavior. TPM learned that in 1991, Akin opposed a law against marital rape because “it might be misused ‘in a real messy divorce as a tool and a legal weapon to beat up on the husband,’ according to a May 1 article that year in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.”

Eventually, Akin was apparently pressured into voting for the bill. Akin also thinks the morning after pill is a “form of abortion,” and wants it banned.

Right now Akin is leading McCaskill by several points in the Missouri Senate race.