“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” – Todd Akin, Republican Senate candidate in Missouri
Asked by reporters if he was saying that it’s never medically necessary to conduct an abortion to save the life of a mother, Tea Party candidate Joe Walsh responded, “Absolutely. With modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance… There is no such exception as life of the mother, and as far as health of the mother, same thing.”
“So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you post the videos online so we can all watch.” – Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk show host
Babies conceived through rape are “a gift in a very broken way.” Rape victims should “accept what God has given to you” and “make the best out of a bad situation.” – Rick Santorum, former Pennsylvania senator
Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, who opposes abortion in instances of rape, co-authored an abortion bill last year that would have distinguished between statutory and “forcible rape.”
“I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” – Richard Mourdock, Republican Senate candidate in Indiana
* * *
Thank you, oh wise white males, for pointing out the depths of gratitude we ladies should feel in our roles as Keepers of the Seed. No, of course these are not our bodies, they belong to you and always have. We are not to shirk our responsibilities in this mysterious collusion, or be less than grateful and accepting of the gifts you have bestowed. You will lift the burden of decision from our slender backs, because you care (we can tell by that concerned knit of your brow), because you’ve got the science more than figured out, and because, after all, if there were anything legitimate in our complaints, god would surely have intervened on our behalf. If he doesn’t . . . well, then of course that’s an indictment in itself, of our innate culpability and the ways in which we must atone.
In your wisdom, you’ve provided the answer to all acts of violence—man against man, man against woman, man against child—there seems to be a pattern here—and what we females must come to understand is that it’s all part of god’s plan. We don’t need to intervene in any case of violent criminality. God has it figured out. He would never let something happen to one of his children that was anything but intended.
Thank you, right and shining daddies, for your unending patience in showing us the way.
Photograph by Ellen Von Unwerth
