An old video has surfaced, of a speech given by Todd Akin on the House floor back in 2008. It is so detached from reality that it has the capacity to make his claims of a woman's body 'shutting down conception' after rape seem measured by comparison. He claims to have misspoken when he said that raped women rarely get pregnant. Judging by his old comments, perhaps he meant he was not outlandish enough.
Here is a part of the speech he gave in the House.
Who wants to be at the very bottom of the food chain of the medical profession? And what sort of places do these bottom-of-the-food-chain doctors work in? Places that are really a pit. You find that along with the culture of death go all kinds of other law-breaking: not following good sanitary procedure, giving abortions to women who are not actually pregnant, cheating on taxes, all these kinds of things, misuse of anesthetics so that people die or almost die. All of these things are common practice, and all of that information is available for America.
In one paragraph he conflates every possible evil and ascribes them to abortion providers, whom he has referred to as 'terrorists'. Why would a doctor provide a phony abortion? No explanation other than to make them out to be as evil as possible. And tax cheats? Sorry, I'm not seeing the connection.
So these 'bottom of the food chain' doctors must be performing not-abortions on those not-pregnant women who have 'actually' shut that whole thing down.
As Slate points out, the legal abortion-free future he desires would actually lead to the dystopia he describes:
It is clearly lost on Akin that the image he's invoking—of dirty clinics that operate illegally and misuse pain medication—is the reality he's trying to create. He wants to ban abortion, which is a surefire way to get a whole bunch of illegal, underground clinics that aren't held accountable to standard medical practice. If you want clean, safe abortion, you need it to be legal.
Since making national news with his outrageous statement in August and being ostracized by his party, Todd Akin tanked in the polls. But he has gradually climbed back up and is actually
leading by a point in one poll.
Claire McCaskill's website is here.