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Rape comments cost congressman

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Loose lips sink ships, or in the case of Republican Congressman and aspiring Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akins, political careers.

Akins was on track to help the GOP recapture the senate before his comments on rape aired Sunday. “From what I understand from doctors … if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down (getting pregnant).”

According to news reports following the comments, Republican party officials, including presidenial contender Mitt Romney, asked Akin to withdraw from the race, and have said the party will not invest any money in his campaign.

“I think he should accept their counsel and exit the Senate race,” Romney was quoted as saying.
Under state law, the congressman had until Tuesday at 5 p.m. to withdraw, but by late Wednesday he had not done so, saying his comments were “a very, very serious error.

“The good people of Missouri nominated me, and I’m not a quitter,” Akin told Mike Huckabee, a Republican and former governor on a radio show. “My belief is we’re going to take this thing forward. And, by the grace of God, we’re going to win this race. To quote my old friend John Paul Jones: ‘I’ve not yet begun to fight.’”

President Barack Obama took Akins to task saying: “Rape is rape, and the idea that we should be parsing and qualifying and slicing what types of rape we are talking about doesn’t make sense to the American people and certainly doesn’t make sense to me. So what I think these comments do underscore is why we shouldn’t have a bunch of politicians, a majority of whom are men, making healthcare decisions on behalf of women.”

An Internet petition has been started to remove Akins from the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, which has jurisdiciton over health-related legislation.

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