OUR VIEW: Akin would be smart to step aside

• OUR VIEW

OUR VIEW

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Rep. Todd Akin provided a cringe-inducing moment recently and flabbergasted the nation with his response to a question about abortions for women who have been raped.

The Republican from Missouri is running for a spot in the U.S. Senate, and was being interviewed on a television station in St. Louis.

“It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” he said. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

In other words, he believes female human beings who have been raped have the ability to “shut that whole thing down” and not actually become pregnant.

Pretty much anyone who is paying attention to national politics is aghast at such a comment. Democrats obviously are going to make a fuss about Akin’s statements, but even Republicans are shaking their heads this week in disbelief.

Akin vows he won’t step aside in his bid to be re-elected to Congress as people from his own party tell him he should bow out. And in a bellwether for how bad things really are for Akin, even conservative talk-show hosts say he has tainted the Republican Party.

We, too, feel Akin should leave politics.

His comments were nothing short of idiotic. If he was trying to use made-up logic to make his point, that’s bad enough. But if he actually believes that women have such power, his intelligence is not high enough to serve in the United States Congress.

And we can’t even fathom how offensive his comments must be to women who have endured the horrors of rape.

Meanwhile, Akin has told some media outlets that he is no quitter.

“To quote my old friend John Paul Jones, I have not yet begun to fight,” he said.

We predict Akin will succumb to the pressure to step away from Missouri’s political landscape. If he doesn’t, we hope the people of the Show Me State show this guy the door.

Tags: election 2012, todd akin, opinion, editorials, updates, politics, abortion, rape