There’s been way too much posted in the blogosphere about the utter stupidity of U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin (R-MI) and his “legitimate rape” gaffe.   If you haven’t heard of it just Google +”Todd Akin” +”legitimate rape”

And since his statement there have been many other Republicans attempting to either distance themselves from his ignorance, or in some cases trying to make sense of it and even support it.  Republicans are working overtime to erode women’s rights and reproductive freedoms, and they will say or do almost anything to interfere with a woman’s right to choose what happens with her own body.

But now there is Mike Huckabee. He had Mr. Akin on his radio show.  This is his Huckabee’s comment:

While Akin was on his radio show, Huckabee said that some “forcible rapes” created “extraordinary” people.

“Ethel Waters, for example, was the result of a forcible rape,” Huckabee said on his radio show, according to the Los Angeles Times. “I used to work for James Robison back in the 1970s, he leads a large Christian organization. He, himself, was the result of a forcible rape. And so I know it happens, and yet even from those horrible, horrible tragedies of rape, which are inexcusable and indefensible, life has come and sometimes, you know, those people are able to do extraordinary things.”

That is totally beside the point.  It does not matter that some truly great people started life as the product of rape.  It should also be noted that both Ethel Waters and James Robison were born many decades before Roe v. Wade made it legal to terminate a pregnancy in a medically safe way, and even before women had access to other forms of birth control within their own power.  Basically, until the “sexual revolution” in the 1960s women had NO power over their own bodies.

What Huckabee is basically saying is that because some great people came from forcible rape, we can’t allow any pregnancies to be terminated because some of those babies might grow up to be some great person.  That is a totally fucked-up and backwards mentality.  How many unwanted pregnancies produce stellar individuals?  And how many produce children growing up in poverty, or suffering the resentment of a mother who didn’t want them or plan for them, or end up in a life of crime?

It’s like looking for kernels of sweet corn in a pile of shit.  Sure, you might find a few bits of corn, but is it really worth digging through all the shit to find them?  I think not.

We cannot allow religious extremists to take away a woman’s right to control her own body or her right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy (whether by rape or any other means), just on the off chance that some great people might result.   That’s stupid.

And nobody is saying a woman who is made pregnant by rape MUST abort, either.  Nobody is arguing for forced abortions. Pro-choice is about CHOICE — and the only person qualified to decide if a woman should carry an unwanted pregnancy to full term is the woman herself, in consultation with her own doctor.  Many women decide to allow the fetus to grow into a baby, and some even decide to keep and raise the child produced by rape while others choose to deliver the child and give it up for adoption.  And that is fine, because that is their own choice.

Pro-choice is not pro-abortion.  It is about allowing each women the right to decide for herself, without being coerced by idiotic arguments, or religious pressure, or any other external force, especially from the government.