VIDEO: GOP Senate candidate from Missouri ignites firestorm over 'legitimate rape' comment

Missouri Republican Todd Akin, a candidate for the U.S. Senate, ignited a storm of controversy from the left and the right over the weekend with his comments on abortion in cases of rape.

In an interview with a local Fox television station, Akin said that in cases of "legitimate rape," women's bodies have the ability to "shut the whole thing down" — implying that women who get pregnant very likely didn't really feel they were being raped at the time. Akin is strongly anti-abortion in all cases, and was using this logic to explain why he didn't believe a rape exception was necessary to his proposal to ban all abortions in the United States. Doctors say Akin's comments are just plain wrong.

Akin went onto say that, if a women did become pregnant, he felt the punishment should be on the rapist and not, he said, against the unborn child — in essence saying that allowing women to abort a fetus conceived via rape was tantamount to punishing a child, instead of the criminal.

Democrats quickly pounced on his comments and said its indicative of the overall Republican mindse, with President Barack Obama trying to link Akin's comments with challengers Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan's views on women's rights in general and abortion in particular.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that Congressman Akin’s comments were both appalling and offensive. And the broader debate that the Republican Party’s been having over women’s issues, it sounds like something we would have heard 50 years ago,” Ben LaBolt, the Obama campaign spokesman, said according to the Washington Post.

Republicans On The Defensive Over a Senatorial Candidate's Comments on Rape
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