Rape, stupidity and N.C.

(Updated, 2 p.m.) Missouri Rep. Todd Akin isn't the first politician to grab hold of a national news cycle or two by suggesting that victims of "legitimate rape" don't get pregnant. That honor resides closer to home, in Raleigh, where 17 years ago, N.C. Rep. Henry Aldridge decided to play doctor during a debate over abortion funding.

As the Observer's Carol Leonnig reported in a front page story on April 21, 1995:

First-term lawmaker Henry Aldridge stunned the statehouse in a debate on abortion funding Thursday when he made this startling claim: Women can't get pregnant when they're raped.

"The facts show that people who are raped - who are truly raped - the juices don't flow, the body functions don't work and they don't get pregnant, " said Aldridge, 71, a Republican representative from Pitt County.

He made the remark at a morning budget meeting, while arguing that the state didn't need its $1.2 million abortion fund for rape victims.

And that statement sent several legislators and lobbyists - especially women - into a daylong fuming session. Some stalked out of the committee room after he finished speaking. Others sidestepped Aldridge on the House floor.

Rep. Alma Adams, D-Guilford, scoffed on the elevator: "He's a dentist. He shouldn't be talking below the belt."

The news cycle is different now, and the digital universe is quicker to display and fillet the dumb things people say. But Aldridge, a first-termer from Pitt County, saw his remarks beamed from coast to coast. It took a couple of days - an eternity in response time now - for him to apologize. He called his remarks "stupid," but then made the mistake of talking some more. "I think all the girls were offended - well not all the girls - just the ones who would have taken issue with me anyway," he said.

The nationwide reaction, for the most part, was a bemused shake of the head. Part of that, for sure, was the perpetually low bar of expectations the country had for the South (and Southern politicians.) Part of it was that, unlike Akin, Aldridge was merely a state rep from a rural county.

Akin, on the other hand, could win or lose a Senate majority for the GOP, which is why he has been denounced so thoroughly from Republicans, who are pushing hard for him to drop out of his race against Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill. (Update, 2 p.m.: He says definitively that he's staying in.)

But Akin's comments are weightier for a bigger reason. His characterization of "legitimate" rape echoes many who wrongly believe that there are distinctions to make between forcible rape and statutory or date rape - and that those who endure the latter are somehow less of a victim. That thinking has found its way into recent anti-abortion legislation, in which Republicans have argued against exceptions for rape because they might be abused by women who didn't suffer "legitimate" rapes.

Akin is against any exceptions for rape in abortion legislation. So is vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan. According to the New York Times, the two worked together in the U.S. House on a bill that would narrow the definition of rapes so Medicare would pay for fewer abortions for poor women.

Henry Aldridge was reelected in 1996, by the way, and left office two years later. He died in 2002. Todd Akin, thus far, has shown little inclination to leave his Senate race, although party leaders usually get their way in these situations. But whether Akin stays or goes, the dangerous thinking behind his words remains. Not the foolish stab at physiology that will fade from memory, as Aldridge's did, but the extremism that is very much alive in abortion legislation.

Peter St. Onge