August 22, 2012 04:37 PM UTC

Reason #846 Why Romney Can't Escape Akin

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• by: Colorado Pols

Los Angeles Times:

After saying he “can’t defend” Rep. Todd Akin’s suggestion that women don’t get pregnant from rape, Mitt Romney stepped up his rebuke on Tuesday when he called on Akin to drop out of the Missouri Senate race. But archives from Romney’s previous presidential bid show that the Massachusetts Republican has historically supported the person who is the source of Akin’s theory, Dr. Jack C. Willke, the father of the antiabortion movement.

A physician and former president of the National Right to Life Committee, Willke was an “important surrogate” for Romney’s 2008 presidential bid. Willke is the oft-cited source of the theory that rape-related pregnancies are “rare.” The theory is sometimes used by antiabortion advocates to argue that abortion laws should not contain exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape or incest.

Willke believes that trauma caused by violent rape causes a woman’s reproductive system to shut down. He presents this belief as fact in educational materials, including a book about abortion and a website called abortionfacts.com. Willke’s views – and his role in promoting a theory that has been widely rejected in modern medicine – appear not to have concerned Romney in 2007, when he touted Willke’s endorsement…

The intensity with which fellow Republicans have attacked Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin is meant to inoculate the rest of the party from the stigma of Akin’s “indefensible” statements about rape and pregnancy. But it serves another purpose, too: obfuscating the fact that such views have been central to the anti-abortion movement’s philosophy for many years.

From presumptive vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan’s sponsorship of stridently anti-abortion legislation–eagerly supported by Republican members of Congress, including Colorado’s delegation–to Romney’s prior willing use of anti-abortion fringe luminaries who spout Akin’s views unapologetically, there is just no way to walk it all back. And the issue seems certain to take on a much greater importance this year than prior years–not just because Democrats are pushing it, but because Republicans have so spectacularly indicted themselves.

The biggest losers in all this are Republicans who aren’t obsessed with wedge issues like the extremists once again hogging the GOP spotlight. Not Republicans who flip-flopped on Colorado’s “Personhood” initiative now that it’s politically inconvenient (see: Joe Coors, Mike Coffman), Republicans who knew it was inviting disaster all along. Republicans who cringe every time a fellow Republican goes off the rails, as opposed to leaping to their ill-advised defense. We are aware that’s a substantial number of Republicans. Many of them are our friends.

From what we can see, they’re pretty much screwed.