The presidential campaign turned to the subject of abortion this week after Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican candidate for Senate in Missouri, repeated the spurious claim that rape rarely results in pregnancy. "From what I understand from doctors, that's really rare," Akin said in aninterview with a local television station in St. Louis. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."Akin's claim about the rarity of pregnancies resulting from rape is, of course, false. Estimates of the number of pregnancies resulting from rape each year range from 3,000 to 25,000.But the deeper, embedded assumption here -- that rape cannot truly be labeled as such if the victim becomes pregnant -- is not merely a bizarre misunderstanding of basic human biology. It's an insidious myth peddled by figures on the far-right for decades, and its lineage can be traced back centuries, to the earliest, most primitive theories about women, sexuality and reproduction.
Racial politics, 'Fear of a Black President' and the subtext of 'birtherism'
MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry; Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic; W. Kamau Bell, host of "Totally Biased" on FX, and WBAI-FM host Jay Smooth join Up w/ Chris Hayes to discuss Mitt Romney's "birther" remark on Friday, the state of racial politics in modern America and Coates' latest, riveting essay, "Fear of a Black President," which examines the Obama presidency and what Coates calls "the false promise and double standard of integration."
Up with Chris Hayes August 25 2012
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