In 2012, then-Congressman of Missouri Todd Akin infamously voiced the opinion that when women were "legitimately" raped, our bodies had ways to "shut that whole thing down." There was wide outrage over the issue, as well there should have been. It seemed to me at the time that it must be obvious that this was untrue — human genitals aren't like ducks', we haven't evolved corkscrewed vaginas to keep out the semen of unwanted mates.
Nevertheless, on Feb. 25, Idaho state representative Pete Nielsen expressed much the same sentiment, saying that women who were rape or incest victims wouldn't get pregnant "because of the trauma of the incident."
Both men were speaking against the more moderate conservative view that abortion bans should be tempered in cases of incest, rape, or endangered safety of the mother. Akin was speaking about abortion generally; Nielsen specifically about a bill in Idaho that does not include these exceptions, ostensibly because they're not needed.
And these are not isolated incidents. Akin was preceded in his statements by Stephen Freind, a then-Pennsylvania legislator, Henry Aldrige, a then-North Carolina representative, and Fay Boozman, a then-Arkansas state senator and doctor.This is a pattern. And it's a problem, because what it means is that the men in charge of legislating what I can and cannot do with my body have a fundamental misunderstanding of how my body works.
This shouldn't be something I have to say, because it's such elementary human anatomy that we should be ashamed of electing people who don't understand it to office. But let me say it anyway, for any Akins, Neilsens or Boozmans out there: Vaginas don't close for business when a woman is being assaulted. Women don't "secrete" any special spermicidal magic while being raped. We are just as defenseless against pregnancy during a rape as we are when we are when the condom breaks when we're having consensual sex.
And Nielsen is absolutely right about one thing — rape is traumatic. It can leave women with PTSD, anxiety and depression. Carrying a growing reminder of one of the worst things that might happen in your life inside of you for nine months is a psychological burden that some women may not be able to handle, and one that they should not have to handle.
Being pro-life is an entirely understandable view. If you view a fetus as a person from the time it is conceived, the moral dilemma involved in the abortion debate is completely obvious. But to be pro-life without exceptions for rape, incest and the safety of the mother, on the other hand, is to value a grey area over real, demonstrable harm to the pregnant woman. And to believe there should be no exceptions because women cannot get pregnant from being assaulted is particularly galling because it reflects a complete lack of basic knowledge of the issue from the legislators in control of it.
We wouldn't trust legislators who were obviously ignorant about foreign policy to try to legislate foreign policy. We wouldn't trust legislators who didn't understand what the national debt is to make economic decisions.
So, if our legislators don't know how women's bodies work, why would we trust them to control us? Leaving this decision in ignorant hands is too dangerous to allow.