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Who Won the War on Women?
…If it hadn’t been for those antediluvian attacks on contraception, we’d be calling this the Year of the Woman. If there was a war on women this year, it looks like the women are winning.
Margaret Talbot on the female candidates in yesterday’s Senate races, and the “war on women” narrative in this election cycle: http://nyr.kr/RfWGw4
Photograph by Josh Reynolds/AP.
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In working on my book, I went to Rwanda in 2004 to interview women who had borne children of rape conceived during the genocide. …At the end of my final interview, I asked the woman I was interviewing whether she had any questions. She paused shyly for a moment. “Well,” she said, a little hesitantly. “You work in this field of psychology.” I nodded. She took a deep breath. “Can you tell me how to love my daughter more?” she asked. “I want to love her so much, and I try my best, but when I look at her I see what happened to me and it interferes.” A tear rolled down her cheek, but her tone turned almost fierce, challenging. “Can you tell me how to love my daughter more?” she repeated.
Perhaps Todd Akin has an answer for her.
"— “The Legitimate Children of Rape” - Andrew Solomon on the historical relationship between rape and pregnancy: http://nyr.kr/RsAKyQ(Source: newyorker.com)
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Akin disgraced himself as a benighted zealot by blathering about “legitimate rape,” but it’s a mistake, I think, to focus one’s outrage on the trauma of rape and incest victims, on teen-age girls of severely limited mental capacity who are conned by predators, or on patients who have been told by their physicians that a full-term pregnancy may kill them. Forcing such women to bear a child violates their integrity in a barbaric fashion—it rapes them twice.
Judith Thurman on Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex,” Todd Akin, Paul Ryan, and the abortion debate: http://nyr.kr/SJtwrP
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Paul Ryan talks to KDKA in Pittsburgh about Akin, abortion, and what he calls “the right of freedom of religion that President Obama is violating.” Watch the interview, and click-through to read Amy Davidson’s take: http://nyr.kr/SVeNWg
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In today’s Daily Comment, Amy Davidson considers whether Todd Akin’s exit would really change the G.O.P.’s position on abortion: http://nyr.kr/NHx8oE
The question isn’t whether Republicans “betrayed” Akin, or whether he, in another sense of the word, betrayed a truth about the party. It is who betrayed women in America, who is willing to fight for women—and what women, when they walk into the polls on election day, see as their choice.
Photograph by Christian Gooden/AP Photo.
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Seven Questions for Republicans Abandoning Akin→
[Abandoning Todd Akin] shouldn’t be too easy for the G.O.P.—given that the actual policy positions, if not medical knowledge, of many in the Party are quite close to Akin’s. This is true of Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s running mate. So here’s a test: Are you a Republican politician who would desperately like to distance yourself from Akin? Answer these seven simple questions first…
Click-through to read Amy Davidson’s seven questions: http://nyr.kr/Sgikm3
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Republican Congressman Proposes National Security Role for Uterus→
ST. LOUIS (The Borowitz Report)—Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin doubled down on his controversial remarks about the female body today, proposing a prominent national security role for the uterus: http://nyr.kr/Sa2APZ
