Todd Akin Not Sorry for Rape Comments After All

Former GOP rep says he regrets apologizing for 'legitimate rape' statement
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 10, 2014 11:27 AM CDT

First Todd Akin said "legitimate rape" victims rarely get pregnant. Then the Missouri rep apologized for the rape comment in a commercial for his 2012 Senate run and the world moved on (but not before opponent Claire McCaskill soundly defeated him). Now he’s back with a new book and a new (old) outlook: that he was scientifically accurate in his initial assessment of rape, according to Politico. "My comment about a woman’s body shutting the pregnancy down was directed to the impact of stress of fertilization," he writes in Firing Back: Taking on the Party Bosses and Media Elite to Protect Our Faith and Freedom.

"This is something fertility doctors debate and discuss. Doubt me? Google 'stress and infertility,' and you will find a library of research on the subject." And he says apologizing for the initial comment is one of his few regrets: "By asking the public at large for forgiveness, I was validating the willful misinterpretation of what I had said." Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee penned the foreword to Akin's book, scheduled to hit shelves July 15, and calls out Republicans who "circled the wagons," according to Raw Story, "not to support Todd and help him overcome an obstacle but instead as a firing squad pointed at the congressman." (More Todd Akin stories.)

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