How can Todd Akin believe that the body of a woman has a built-in process to prevent conception from taking place in case a rape happens?
How can even a low information legislator like Joe Walsh believe that no woman ever dies from pregnancy or childbirth nowadays?
How can Willard Romney believe that when the uninsured get sick they get free care at the ER?
How can “conservatives” believe things that are demonstrably false, things that can easily be disproven with innumerable facts that are at the tip of the fingers of anyone who is on the internet?
You may notice that I am using the word “conservatives” in air quotes. That's because I don't think these people are in any way truly conservative. The modern ideological “conservative” engages in magical thinking that those of us who are not of that bent may be unable to understand.
Simply put, their understanding of the basis of knowledge is not the same as ours. It comes from a different place.
To you, as a person who understands science, facts probable represent reality. They are observable. If someone else gathered them, you can probably look them up. A great many verified facts should begin to describe reality, and when these facts are analyzed, what we come up with is a theoretical understanding of what happens in the real world. We can then use that theoretical understanding as a basis to make change happen.
So you start with facts and reach a conclusion about reality that could be called a theory.
To the “conservative”, facts don't matter. What matters is “truth”. In fact, “truth” is the beginning and end.
Once they know the “truth”, all they need do is find “facts” to support it. The “facts” don't even have to support it all that well if there are enough of them.
It is pure confirmation bias.
If they can't find facts, they can make them up. Remember, for these people facts are not real. So they deny our data and create their own on the fly, like Willard Romney does.
An extreme example of “facts” that make no sense to us would be having a discussion on the existence of God with a person who thinks the fact that he feels he has experienced Jesus's presence should be proof enough for us. He is perplexed why we don't accept what we see as his hallucinations of conversations with Jesus as “proof” that Jesus is real in the here and now.
Truth is received. It may be received from a higher-up in their church, it may be received from Fox News or hate radio, it may be received from the Republican operative who sends them the morning email with talking points to troll on Facebook.
The “truth” they receive may have some rudimentary explanation, but it isn't important how well the “facts” support the premise, because this is “truth” we are talking about here. It is a point of faith, not something they question. Once they have received the truth, they just know it's true. That's good enough for them.
The fact is, they probably don't understand why we don't accept their package of “truth” and “facts”. When we respond with facts that ought to disprove it, they shovel more lies at us, perhaps going into a full Gish gallop. No communication takes place.
If we look at what they believe, we can see how their public statements follow.
Todd Akin and others who believe as he does believe that hardly any women are ever raped. Almost all claims of rape are just some slut who enjoyed herself and then changed her mind afterwards, looking forward to getting rich by blackmailing the guy. The fact that they can't point to a single instance of this happening is “proof” that it happens all the time but is covered up by these sly women and their lawyers.
Neither Todd Akin nor Joe Walsh has any idea how the female part of the reproductive system works. Women are beneath them, as is learning about such things, which might taint their delicate masculine sensibility.
Joe Walsh “knows” a lot about abortion. He “knows” that there is never any need for abortion, that pregnancy is problem-free. He probably “knows” that the majority of women use abortion as their primary form of family planning. He probably “knows” that lots of women get pregnant just to have abortions, and that almost all these abortions are paid for by taxpayers. He probably also “knows” that it is very common for women to have full-term abortions of healthy babies because they changed their minds.
Another thing he may “know”, as many right wing religious fanatics do, is that women who have had abortions are guilty of murder and deserve to be punished. It is pointless to argue that banning abortion or making safe abortion impossible to get will result in women dying from botched back alley abortions, because people of this mindset often believe that such abortions should carry as much risk as possible, because death in such a circumstance is God's Will™.
They may also believe that the noblest thing a woman can do is to die preventably from a doomed pregnancy, that this is one of the few ways morally inferior women can gain redemption.
And of course they believe that pregnancy is God's Punishment™ to slutty women for having sex, as are STDs. Availability of birth control means that such women can get away with having sex and escape punishment, when in fact they should be forced into poverty for life.
What else do these people believe? Things like...
47% of the population has been on welfare for generations, doesn't know anyone who has ever had a job, votes straight Democratic because they believe the government owes them food, housing, and medical care, buys steak and lobster with their food stamps...
Tens of millions of people voted illegally in 2008, throwing the election to Obama, thanks to vote fraud sponsored by ACORN. Busloads of illegal aliens were driven from Mexico to every state in the country, permitted to register with no documents and vote on the spot...
Those are their beliefs they have enshrined as “truth”.