You cannot say that there isn't a range of opinion within the GOP on issues relating to abortion. Back in 2012, Todd Akin, running for US Senate from Missouri, was asked in an interview whether he thought abortion should be illegal even in cases of pregnancies resulting from sexual assaults. He replied:
Well you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, well how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try and 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 on the rapist and not attacking the child.
Akin was a member of the House of Representatives when he said that. Yesterday, Steve King, his former colleague and current US representative from Iowa, explained to a conservative group in the state why he was opposed to abortion even in cases of rape or incest:
What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled out anyone who was a product of rape or incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that? Considering all the wars, and all the rapes and pillages that happened throughout all these different nations, I know that I can't say that I was not a part of a product of that.
Got it? The one guy thinks that, in cases of "legitimate rape" (as opposed I guess to the illegitimate kind), the female body recognizes a rapist's sperm and has ways of shutting down pregnancy when the little swimmers belong to a bad man. Or something like that. The thorny ethical dilemma is thereby mitigated by its rarity. Praise the Lord for sending His tender mercies! The other guy has a different, less exalted view of the wonders of the female body. He thinks that, far from pregnancies resulting from rape getting "shut down," so many people through time got their start this way that we all owe our lives to our rapey forebears.
It's a big tent party because, while united on the question of whether there can be any exception to a comprehensive abortion ban, the different reasons advanced to justify the absolutist position are incompatible, mutually exclusive, and equally bizarre and ridiculous. Usually, if someone says
x is true
and someone else says
No, the opposite of x is true
the task is then to decide who's right or, at least, who's closer to being right. That's not an option with these guys, and it's not as if they're drunk undergraduates talking "philosophy" at 3 in the morning. Members of the US House of Representatives earnestly setting out their views to journalists and voters! It's an argument against democratic government. People are saying today that King should resign because "the people of his district deserve better." As if "the people of his district" don't keep on electing him! He's been in the Congress for sixteen years.
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