I am writing in response to Alexander Veras’ viewpoint, “Illegitimate Arguments.”
Certainly, Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin (R —Mo.) was thrown under the GOP bus after a firestorm erupted and seared its way across various social networks, but in reality, Akin’s only real mistake was to let the GOP’s plan to be known — to force women to carry a rapist’s child to term, a plan co-authored by Mitt Romney’s choice for vice president, Paul Ryan.
Their misguided scheme to get America, the land of the free, to swallow this hogwash is to first relabel rape into two categories — forcible/legitimate and then ‘rapes’ that women lie about. Their twisted and unscientific logic goes like this: If a woman conceives, she must then be lying about the rape, because if the rape was “legitimate” as Akin said, she (the victim) has ways to shut it down. It follows that any woman who becomes pregnant must have lied about being raped and therefore must bear the child (Thank goodness woman won’t be forced to carry a rapist’s child).
The fact is Todd Akin and Paul Ryan authored a plank in this year’s GOP platform that makes no exception for terminating a pregnancy, even in the cases of rape, incest or saving the life of the mother. Mr. Veras says that Akin is out of the GOP mainstream. Does that also mean his co-author, Mr. Ryan, is also out of the Republican mainstream?Evidently not. This is Republicans in denial at its best.
I also wonder about Mr. Veras condemnation and deflection of President Clinton’s sex life for tarnishing the Presidency, while he said nothing about President Bush, whose lies led to the death of over four thousand patriots and the crippling of thousands more, at the astronomical cost of over a trillion dollars. I guess we know where the advocates of the GOP priorities lay.
Jacques Mersereau
Managing Producer of the University Musical Society