The 2014 repubgcan Candidates Are Cut From The Same Cloth As Todd “Legitimate Rape” Aiken

Several repugican Senate candidates across the country have joined Aiken in support of zygote personhood the Supreme Court gave legitimacy in Hobby Lobby and the crusade to criminalize…

One of the major problems with America is the level of ignorance about a wide range of issues plaguing a great majority of the population. However, the ignorance quotient pales in comparison to the number of Americans clinging to archaic religious mythos they demand the government imposes on the entire population. Over the past few years, there have been some truly mind-boggling assertions by repugicans, and fortunately the repugican cabal has yet to succeed in legislating religious dogmata on the nation. Unfortunately for American women, religious repugicans do not need a a reason, or scriptural basis, for a truly insane idea because the wingnut Supreme Court gave their most fantastical idea legitimacy and several repugican cabal candidates for Senate are taking advantage of it.

Two years ago failed senatorial candidate Todd Akin claimed that if a woman is “legitimately raped” the biological process differentiates between conjugal sex and legitimate rape and shuts down the reproductive process. Now, Akin is on a national book tour defending his lunacy and promoting the idea of personhood. Personhood is the absurd contention that the instant a sperm cell punctures an ovum, the resulting single-celled zygote is a person with all the Constitutional rights enumerated in the 14th Amendment. Now, several Republican Senate candidates across the country have joined Akin in support of zygote personhood the Supreme Court gave legitimacy in Hobby Lobby and the crusade to criminalize contraception and abortion begins in earnest.

Despite all known medical and biological science, when the wingnut court agreed with Hobby Lobby’s owners that sex while using contraception is abortion and considered murder, Personhood gained judicial validity. In effect, the catholic wingnuts affirmed personhood and opened the door for religious repugicans to outlaw all birth control as murder; an assertion repugican Senate candidates Cory Gardner (Colorado), Thom Tillis (N.C), Tom Cotton (Ark), Terri Lynn Land (MI), Joni Ernst (IA), and Steve Daines (Mont) all support. All of the repugicans also support banning abortion without exception, and many support making abortion a felony and banning hospitals from offering emergency contraception to rape and incest victims.

According to a spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Regan Page, “Cory Gardner, Thom Tillis, Terri Lynn Land, and Joni Ernst are cut from the same cloth as Todd Akin and embrace the same radical positions to block birth control and roll back women’s health care rights as he does. The last thing women want is a Todd Akin representing them in the U.S. Senate; but, like Akin, Gardner, Ernst, Tillis, Land and others support policies that outlaw birth control.”

One of the measures repugicans support, besides personhood as a constitutional amendment, is a bill sponsored by Cory Gardner making abortion a class 3 felony unless the doctor made a reasonable attempt to save the fetus; the mother was expendable. Gardner also voted to ban hospitals from informing rape victims about emergency contraceptives; likely because the religio-wingnuts insist a woman does not have a right to consequence-free sex, even if it is rape.

In North Carolina, all repugican candidates, including Senate candidate Thom Tillis believe the state is authorized to ban contraception because personhood grants legal protections to fertilized human eggs. North Carolina’s repugican candidates avidly support a constitutional amendment granting personhood to a zygote. That bizarre notion is also supported by Tom Cotton (r-AR) who co-sponsored a bill in January granting full constitutional rights to a fertilized egg the moment a sperm cell punctures it. The bill, “Life at Conception Act” (H.R. 1901) declares the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being beginning at the moment of fertilization.

In Michigan, Terri Lynn Land received a ringing endorsement from the personhood movement Right to Life that required her to oppose abortion and support a “Human Life Amendment” to the U.S. Constitution. Land also opposes abortion or emergency contraception even in the case of rape or incest because a zygote is a person and blocking a zygote’s implantation and development is murder. Iowa Senate candidate Joni Ernst sponsored a resolution in Iowa’s Senate last December proposing a “Fetal Personhood” amendment to the Iowa Constitution to ban abortion and contraception. Another Republican Senate Candidate, Steve Daines (r-Mont) was a co-sponsor of the “Life at Conception Act” because it provides Constitutional protections to a zygote he believes is a person with rights superseding those of the real person (the mother).

The Personhood movement was a lunatic fringe just a couple of years ago, but the catholic and evangelical wingnuts have made the movement mainstream among repugicans (which is still a lunatic fringe, but let's not be picky). The Supreme Court likely gave the Personhood movement the precedent they have lusted after since the movement’s inception. Although the wingnuts did not specifically rule that life begins at the moment of conception, they did the next best thing by siding with Hobby Lobby’s religious belief that interrupting fetal development is abortion and murder. What is still a damning incrimination of the wingnuts on the Court, is their holding that even though contraceptives prevent ovulation, they are still an abortion.

This bizarre catholic and evangelical idea that a fertilized egg is a person has no foundation in the christian bible; it is a catholic construct to control women and force them to pay the consequences for having sex; even if it is rape sex. According to the god of the bible, a fetus is not a living being until it breathes air, but that concept does not allow the religious to control women’s sexuality. Banning contraceptives and abortion does, and that is the impetus for the Personhood movement that began when catholics began a crusade to ban all forms of “unnatural birth control” cult dogma defines as a sin akin to murder.

If any American woman, even catholics and protestant devotees, were skeptical that their reproductive health choices were under attack from repugicans before Hobby Lobby, they now have clarity. Because now that the lunatic fringe in the likes of Todd Akin is the repugican mainstream, if they thought one religious freak in the Senate was a frightening prospect, they should shudder at the future if repugicans gain control of the Senate. A much worse scenario is a bible-belt state passing Personhood legislation that gets challenged in the courts and appealed to the Supreme Court, because the 5 catholic wingnuts have already revealed they base their decisions on catholic dogma, not the Constitution.

It is important to remember that the High Court read the amicus brief from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and several medical associations that stated “there is no scientific evidence that contraceptives available in the United States and approved by the FDA affect an existing pregnancy. Instead, they prevent ovulation, so there is no egg to fertilize, and no egg, like no implantation, means no pregnancy and no abortion.” That is contrary to catholic dogma and Hobby Lobby’s religious beliefs and the 5 wingnut Justices rejected the medical science out of hand.

American women have faced overwhelming onslaughts on their rights throughout the nation’s history, and although they made some gains, repugicans are intent on sending them into perpetual childbirth. The repugicans need a few victories to take control of the Senate, and if they do there is precious little to prevent them from unleashing Hell on women’s rights. Don’t believe it? Three days ago the Senate majority Democrats tried, and failed, to undo the contraception part of the Hobby Lobby ruling and even if they had been successful, religious House repugicans would never let a Hobby Lobby fix come up for a vote.

America’s women are being attacked from several fronts and what is still puzzling is no-one is willing to cite the source of the assault; religious extremism. The Personhood movement is no longer an extremist fringe and with full support from repugicans, the only hope to stave off bans on abortion and contraception is turning out en masse to defeat repugicans in November.

If repugican women think they are immune from the religio-wingnuts' attacks, they are hopelessly deluded because catholic and evangelical wingnut leaders, the Personhood movement, Supreme Court, and repugicans in Congress and state legislatures are Hell-bent on using religion to “trump women’s right to consequence-free sex.” Tragically they have the numbers, funding, and religious fervor to get what they have wanted for decades; total control over America’s women because that is what the repugican religious war on women is about.