Republican, Legitimate Rape | featured news

Todd Akin’s list of allies has grown yet again. Akin this morning won the endorsement of the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF), the PAC founded by influential conservative Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina. DeMint himself endorsed Akin Wednesday in a joint announcement with former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

Under fire from his own party for controversial comments on rape, U.S. Republican Representative Todd Akin on Thursday won the support of social conservatives in his effort to stay in Missouri's US Senate race.

In just a few days, a politician largely unknown outside the U.S. has earned the dubious reputation on the world stage as the "rape-gaffe congressman."

Just look at what happened yesterday. While the nation was engulfed in a ludicrous conversation about “legitimate rape,” “forcible rape” and “personhood,” the Republican platform committee approved a draft that reaffirmed the party’s extreme anti-abortion stance and called for a constitutional amendment to protect all human life... Akin and his extreme and offensive views are no longer the fringe.

Representative Todd Akin’s remarks on rape have focused attention on the party’s agenda on restricting abortion rights, a politically volatile topic for Mitt Romney and other candidates.

Senior Republicans scrambled to distance themselves on Monday from Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin's comments about rape, which put an unwelcome focus on divisive social issues a week before the party holds its election-year convention.

... Last year, Akin, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and most of the House GOP cosponsored a bill that would have narrowed the already-narrow exceptions to the laws banning federal funding for abortion—from all cases of rape to cases of "forcible rape."

Missouri Congressman Todd Akin, the conservative Republican U.S. Senate candidate, quickly backed off comments that aired earlier Sunday, in which he told an interviewer that a woman's body "has ways" to prevent pregnancy during rape and that such pregnancies are "really rare."