Todd Akin, You're a Twatwaffle. With Twatwaffle Friends. And Anyone Who Believes You is a Double Twatwaffle.

I'm crazy? I'm the crazy one in the family? In the townhouse complex? On the block? At the church? In town? In the county? In Illinois? In the USA? Well, turn me upside down and paint me blue, because I guess it's true after all.

Suffice it to say, certain people close to me negate things that are factual in favor of, how do I put this politely? Let's just call it "God's plans." And that this close tie to me, in particular, who believes the Earth is only 4,000 years old and that carbon dating is erroneous, actually, firmly believes the extraordinarily outlandish GOP anti-abortion exclamation from Republican uber-douche Todd Akin that the female body has the biological capacity to functionally incapacitate her own reproductive system based on the type of sexual intercourse in which she's involved.

Wowzers! We womenfolk are SO controlling yet amazing that, if we so need, we can reconstitute our own body chemistry to filter out and kill off mean, cold-blooded, heartless semen from yucky men who hurt us while warmly welcoming loving, tender, passionately happy (and ideally, Christian) sperm anxious to turn us into mommies. But hey, if a baby comes out either the unimaginable terror of rape or incest, let's all celebrate! Thanks be to God for this little baby born out of and at the stake of my life and safety. It's the divine plan! Bullshit.

Remember, I'm *insane.* Thus, you'd think, I should also believe that when bitten by a chemically-altered, experimental spider-gone-loose, Peter Parker could suddenly shoot motherfucking webs that stuck to buildings with G-force out of his goddamn wrists. Wait a sec. The latter is a cartoon character. What has Akin, in concurrence with the Romney/Ryan/Republican campaign and right-wing media effectively accomplished, really? Turning women into cartoon characters as well. Why? Because Shit. Like. This. Is. Fantasy. All of it.

Ask any woman who's been raped if they would conclude there exists such a separation as "legitimate" vs. "illegitimate" rape. Or forcible vs. what, exactly? "Sorta-coerced?" "Somewhat allowable?" "Your duty?" "I didn't hear her say 'No'?" "She asked for it?" Rape is forcible, in EVERY way, on every occasion and its legitimacy is never in doubt. If the woman does not wish for nor consent to any sexual encounter, into ANY orifice of her penetrable body, it's forcible rape. To even be forcefully required to touch a man in a way that scares or hurts the woman, that's rape too. There is no gray area here, despite what utter fucking retards like Todd Akin and the hyper-conservative right wing might wish the people of the United States would believe.

"But Annie," you logical-thinking people say, "It's scientific fact that women can and do get pregnant as a result of rape!" Well, that's Defense Exhibit A. And the result of those pregnancies, if they are allowed to develop, produce people who, while they may be part of God's Great Kingdom, fucking didn't have to be born to women who, by their very existence and nature, detest the resulting spawn, resent it having to be born and most likely wish "the father" to have his balls tied up and ripped off. "It's not the baby's fault the mother was raped," or "You can't blame an innocent soul because your brother made you have sex with him!" I've heard from right-wingers I know. "She can always put the baby up for adoption but don't MURDER the baby!" people say.

Look. Medically. Biologically. Scientifically. Hell, take rape out of the equation and just insert "badly timed, unprotected sex" and I will argue you down to a pubic hair strand that taking a sequence of two pills to prevent a zygote from forming isn't "murder". That having an embryo or a fetus removed isn't "murder." Yes, I'm taking God out of the equation. If you believe in God and are against abortion, that's your right. Just as I believe in God and believe it's my right to choose whether or not to be pregnant. (I guess when it comes right down to it, in this great nation of ours, I "chose" to have my hysterectomy. No one forced me into it. Not having one would've killed me, but meh...my Calling of More People To Annoy outweighed my Should I Die of Cancer? I killed my uterus! My baby-holding machine! GASP!)

"Science-schmience," my close tie would argue. "Scientists believe in things like, gasp, evolution too, and crazy ass shit like that!" Todd Akin is on the House Science Committee. He shouldn't be. He's a clueless motherfucker. That's Defense Exhibit B. (Though this person would never say something as vile as "crazy ass shit.")


Look, Chickie Babies, I don't care if you're an atheist, an agnostic, a Christian (Catholic or Protestant or whatever hyper-Bible-enthusiast), a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Unitarian, a Zoroastrian or if you've wiped your ass with the Shroud of Turin. Rape is rape. Rape is a crime and women who are raped or the victims of incest should get Priority A in their right to, if not to rapidly receive the Plan B/Emergency contraceptive, then early and safe abortions, and furthermore, the rest of us females in the world certainly deserve the right to choose it too. And it shouldn't be in some back alley-come-medical facility with dirty instruments that threaten the woman's life. Roe vs. Wade passed for a reason. So that women's lives could be saved. In that regard, yes, the Supreme Court decided the mother's life was more important than that of the unborn zygote/embryo/fetus.

All my close tie will do is defend the rights of the unborn, without regard to my rights as a grown woman. That makes me very sad, He's all for liberating the zygotes and letting women suffer through a traumatic pregnancy via a traumatic rape, to bear a PTSD trigger you have to raise into adulthood because that's what God wants us to do? Somehow I doubt that very highly. This person, who I've unconditionally loved my whole life, has put his love for me upon the condition that I agree with him that rape or incest pregnancies should be maintained and not aborted.


The Prosecution's Only Exhibit? That I, myself, was forcibly raped repeatedly, against my will, on what had to amount to literal hundreds of times, but at no time did a pregnancy result. "Well, there you go!" Akin would argue. (The rapes all occurred before I had a hysterectomy, permanently ending my potential for conception, via any means.) That's what my dear one argued. Believing the notion that a woman's body releases certain "baby-proofing" hormones if a woman is forcibly taken sexually, "That's why you never got pregnant," I was told. Sigh. Seriously?

"Ok....but I also failed to become pregnant during the several years when Craig and I were TRYING to have another baby." I failed to conceive on fertility drugs and constant monitoring. It was determined through extensive SCIENTIFIC TESTING that my body amassed so many adhesions, so much scar tissue, as a result of the cesarean birth of my only child, that it became anatomically impossible for me to impregnate period. After the c-section in 2000, I had laproscropic surgery the following year to attempt to separate my bladder and uterus, which had merged together via scar tissue, causing me enormous pain with intercourse. That much was fixed, though the scar tissue continued to amass over the years, making it relatively difficult to dig around and remove my uterus in March.

For being such a Bible-based, thoughtful, enthusiastic Christian, my dear one, who abhors hatred of any kind and thinks all abortions are "murder," he's quick to judge me and call me an egotist for putting my body before that of a collection of cells in my (former) uterus. It makes me sad that he's so willing to defend his ultra-conservative principles and Biblical beliefs, yet refuses to even attempt to understand the scope of what happened to me at Chris' hands. He said, "It's not that I'm pro-rape..." and I am thinking to myself, "ARE there people OUT THERE who ARE PRO-RAPE?" How fucking frightening is that? (The rapists themselves must comprise this grouping or something.)  If my ego is to preserve my life over that of a collection of cells that hasn't even developed human bodily characteristics, yes, I'm more important to the world than that.

My rapist threatened to kill me, on numerous occasions for various reasons, usually sadistic pathology, just because he knew he physically could. I told my dear one that obviously he'd never been pinned down by a 280 lb man, with a dog collar on your neck, being choked, slapped in the face, sliced by a knife, then urinated on and told to clean yourself up, as if you were a complete piece of leftover reheated piece of meat.

He doesn't understand the lingering fears. The lingering anxiety. The lingering dreams. The scent of something or seeing something that reminds you of your rapist, a neighborhood, all of which are psychological triggers that manifest as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I live with that every day. And unless you've lived through it, whether you're a  Democrat, Republican or Independent, you can't begin to understand the long-lasting psychological ramifications of being a victim of rape. It's insanely difficult and painful.

"Judge not, less you be judged." That's somewhere in the Bible, isn't it?  It's an almost impenetrable wall to fight with someone on the radical Christian right and win. In the meantime, however, we've still got Planned Parentood's wonderful services. They put out this short vignette today about how far the GOP has gone: