MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

A St. Louis Post-Dispatch article details how an assistant University of Missouri medical professor appears to be the source for GOP Senate Candidate Todd Akin's grotesque statements about rape victims stopping impregnation due to trauma:

In supporting his claim about trauma and ovulation, Mecklenburg cited experiments conducted in Nazi death camps.

The Nazis tested this hypothesis "by selecting women who were about to ovulate and sending them to the gas chambers, only to bring them back after their realistic mock-killing, to see what the effect this had on their ovulatory patterns. An extremely high percentage of these women did not ovulate."

Finally, Mecklenburg said it was likely that the rapists — because of "frequent masturbation" — were unlikely to be fertile themselves.

It's easy to dismiss, as Romney is trying to do, Akin's macabre biological theory, but as Maureen Dowd opines in The New York Times,



Other Republicans are trying to cover up their true identity to get elected. Even as party leaders attempted to lock the crazy uncle in the attic in Missouri, they were doing their own crazy thing down in Tampa, Fla., by reiterating language in their platform calling for a no-exceptions Constitutional amendment outlawing abortion, even in cases of rape, incest and threat to the life of the mother.

Paul Ryan, who teamed up with Akin in the House to sponsor harsh anti-abortion bills, may look young and hip and new generation, with his iPod full of heavy metal jams and his cute kids. But he’s just a fresh face on a Taliban creed — the evermore antediluvian, anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-gay conservative core. Amiable in khakis and polo shirts, Ryan is the perfect modern leader to rally medieval Republicans who believe that Adam and Eve cavorted with dinosaurs.



Platform as the In short, Akin may have a Dr. Mengele experiment in his brain, but he speaks for the Republican PartyPlatform as the Boston Globe pointed out yesterday:



Even as the Republican establishment continued to call for Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri to drop out of his Senate race because of his comments on rape and abortion, Republicans approved platform language Tuesday calling for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion with no explicit exceptions for cases of rape or incest.

GOP Uncle Todd "Fester" (Addams Family) Akin may have gone off the reservation by providing an imbecilic justification for supporting fetal person hood, but his partner in the House in advancing that concept is Paul Ryan.

And Mitt Romney is now supporting his running mate's and Akin's efforts to victimize raped women (whatever qualifications Romney makes to get votes), given that he will be running on his party platform that accomplishes just that.

Law Professor Francis A. Boyle, a BuzzFlash at Truthout reader, sent this in an e-mail as an ominous portent of what may be in store for American women in the future:

I was the Lawyer for all 40,000 raped women of Bosnia. They were all my clients. I argued their claims for genocide to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. I won two World Court orders to protect them. The great powers on the UN Security Council refused to do so. And every time I go back to Bosnia, I meet with these raped women, hear their stories, and give them words of comfort. There is nothing more I can do for them now beyond that. I no longer represent them. No one does. And no one cares. Not even their own government.

Is this where the United States is headed?

After all, the redefining rape laws sponsored by Akin, Paul Ryan and others around the US are the rape equivalent of the "Stand Your Ground" license to murder laws.

Although formulated as anti-abortion laws under any circumstances, these bills (which could become the law of the land in a Romney/Paul administration) basically are license to rape laws.

It puts the burden on the victim to prove that she was "forcibly" raped, and what's more legally forces her to bear the child of the rapist.