Opinion
Rep. Todd Akin’s Illegitimate Views
“Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now”
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The Skanner Newspaper, established
in October 1975, is a weekly publica-
tion, published each Wednesday by
I
felt the spirit of Dr. Aaronnette
White guiding my fingers for
this column. A couple of weeks
ago, Aaronnette died suddenly at
the premature age of 51 years. A
rape survivor and a respected psy-
chology professor, she was a fierce
warrior for the reproductive rights
of women, particularly African-
American women.
During her brief stint in St.
Louis during the 1980s, she organ-
ized black women (and some
black men) to take out a full page
ad in The St. Louis Americancon-
demning rape in the black
community. It was a bold move
that pulled the covers off an issue
that had rarely received public
scrutiny.
Recently Congressman Todd
Akin (R) caused a firestorm when
asked about his staunch opposition
to abortion in the case of women
getting pregnant after a rape. He
gave this stunning explanation: “If
it’s a legitimate rape, the female
body has ways to try to shut that
whole thing down.”
GOP leaders ran as fast and far
away from Akin as they could.
Karl Rove snatched back the
money his American Crossroads
and Crossroads GPS PAC gave the
Akin campaign. The Republican
National Committee chair, along
with other party officials, demand-
ed that Akin – who won the
Republican primary for U.S. Sen-
ate on Aug. 7 – step down.
VP contender Paul Ryan called
the remarks “outrageous” and
“indefensible.” I found this retort
S T . L OUIS
A MERICAN
Jamala
Thomas
to be quite hypocritical as Ryan
shares the same viewpoint. Ryan
The laws prohibit federal fund-
ing of abortion or birth control
services resulting in defunding of
groups like Planned Parenthood.
Abortion clinics have been
bombed, and doctors who per-
formed abortions have been
assaulted or killed.
The detrimental bills passed by
Republicans also have attempted
to redefine rape. They have coined
new and confusing terms like
Last year, nearly 1,000 anti-abortion
bills were introduced across the
country. The laws have teetered on
the absurd, such as forcing women to
endure vaginal ultrasounds before
abortions, or redefining the moment
of conception
and Akin have co-sponsored
bills that are tearing away at the
right to a safe and accessible abor-
tion.
Last year, nearly 1,000 anti-
abortion bills were introduced
across the country. The laws have
teetered on the absurd, such as
forcing women to endure vaginal
ultrasounds before abortions, or
redefining the moment of concep-
tion. An Arizona law passed this
year declared that pregnancy
begins two weeks before concep-
tion!
“forcible rape” and “consensual
rape.”
Akin’s comments amplified the
voices of some of the 32,000
women who are raped each year
but who make a conscious choice
to keep their babies. Women like
Shauna Prewitt. Did you know
that the rapist fathers can sue for
parental rights? Prewitt knows all
too well.
The attack on rape victims is
unconscionable even though these
draconian views on rape have per-
sisted in conservative circles for a
couple of decades. They have
emanated from Dr. John Wilke, a
butthead who must have bought
his medical degree online
at www.degreesforstupidpeople.co
m. All the other right-wing nuts
defer to Dr. Wilke’s demented
medical explanation: that women
have some biological semen
blocker that is released during
rape.
I decided to consult a real ob-
gyn doctor about the validity of
these unscientific ideas; maybe I
had missed some new research on
the subject. I called up my niece,
Dr. Rene Turner, who graduated
Summa Cum Laude from real
medical schools (Xavier and
Tulane) and now works with real
women patients. She totally
debunked the pre-historic thinking
about rape and pregnancies and
expressed surprised that any sane
person would promote such harm-
ful myths.
This brings me all the way back
to Dr. White and countless others
who have worked tirelessly to edu-
cate the general society on the
issue of rape, to end the attacks on
women’s reproductive rights and
to bring about the personal and
psychological security of women.
We who believe in freedom and
women’s rights should not rest
until the lives, choices and dignity
of all women are fully restored and
protected.
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Republicans on Parade: Who Built What?
T
he Republican National
Convention’s theme was,
“We Built This.” One of
the speakers was Sher Valenzuela,
a Delaware businesswoman who
happens to be Latina. She touted
the success of her upholstery busi-
ness and implied it thrived
because of her hard work.
That’s only partly true. She also
thrived because she started out
with $2 million loan from the
Small Business Administration,
and got another $15 million in
non-competitive government con-
tracts. Would her company, First
State Manufacturing, have made it
without government help? Your
guess is as good as mine. But the
notion that “we built this” is
extremely shortsighted.
What exactly did these Republi-
cans build without government
help? They don’t even go to work
every day in our nation’s Capitol
without the help of unpaid
enslaved people who toted rock
and worked in hot sun to build our
nation’s Capitol. It took until
2010 for our nation’s leaders to
erect a plaque commemorating
this effort. We built the Capi-
tol? And it’s isn’t the same “we”
the Republicans are talking about.
It reminds me of a book written
by Pulitzer Prize-winner Annette
Gordon Reed, “The Hemmings of
Monticello (2008).”
As she
reprises some of former President
Thomas Jefferson’s diaries, he
writes about all the cotton and
tobacco “we” planted. I had an
amazing visual of Jefferson with a
hoe picking and planting. He did-
Page 4 The Portland Skanner September 5, 2012
B ENNETT
C OLLEGE
Julianne
Malveaux
n’t. He appropriated the effort of
other people’s work, initiative, and
infrastructure. He didn’t plant a
thing. Enslaved people did the
work. Based on his diaries,
though, the man who died nearly
interconnected and the many ways
that the government role stimu-
lates business. Federal, state, and
local government engage in prac-
tices that subsidize businesses
because they hope for a return, or
because they believe that there are
benefits to the community that
may come because of government
investment. Still, the Republican
stance seems to be a purposeful
amnesia, an attempt to ignore the
many ways government facilitates
the building that they claim they
do.
Congressman Paul Ryan, Mitt
What exactly did these Republicans
build without government help?
bankrupt, expropriates the work of
others in his use of the term “we.”
Republicans held their conven-
tion last week at the Tampa Bay
Times Forum. This is a conven-
tion center that was partly built
with government money, to the
tune of $86 million. As the arena
was renovated to accommodate
Republican attendees to the con-
vention, no doubt government
funds were also used for some of
this. This is one of the tax subsi-
dies that Republicans often decry.
And how does government justify
this? The infusion of all those big
spenders might bring money to
local venders and tax dollars to the
community. I’d like to see the
accounting.
President Obama is right to talk
about the way all enterprise is
Romney’s running mate, peppered
his speech with slams on President
Obama. In his Wednesday night
speech, he said “None of us have
to settle for the best this adminis-
tration offers, a dull, adventureless
journey from one entitlement to
the next, a government-planned
life.”
What entitlements is he talking
about? Subsidies to Head Start,
proven to make a difference in
early
childhood
education?
Unemployment benefits, which
many in his Janesville, Wisc.,
hometown community used when
a General Motors plant closed
under President George Bush not,
as he suggested, President
Obama? Would he remove Pell
grant subsidies to college stu-
dents? Would he eliminate Social
Security? Does he visit national
parks? Government subsidies
built that. Does he ride on any of
our nation’s government subsi-
dized roads and highways? Ryan
has told us what he feels about
Medicare, but his slam on govern-
ment entitlements ignores the
work government has done. Who
built the roads? “We” didn’t.
Government did, with the help of
well-paid contractors.
If Republicans want to know
what “we” built, they need to look
back to the record of former Pres-
ident George W. Bush. That
president built a banking crisis,
and gave banks nearly $800 billion
to bail themselves out. Bush built
an unemployment rate that contin-
ued to soar under the leadership of
his successor, President Barack
Obama. President Built built a
couple of wars, leaving the splash
back to President Obama. Rom-
ney and Ryan; Do you own the
house your party built, the house
President Obama is trying to
repair? Will you claim the “we”
on this?
Republicans need to be remind-
ed of who built what when they
walk into our nation’s Capitol.
Some folks eagerly claim credit
for their quasi-accomplishments.
Others toil, and it takes more than
200 years for our nation to grudg-
ingly acknowledge them. As a
descendent of enslaved people,
that “we built it” rhetoric repels
me.
Julianne Malveaux is a Wash-
ington, D.C.-based economist and
writer