GOP lawmaker defends remarks on rape

Rebekah L. Sanders | The Arizona Republic

Show Caption Hide Caption Rep. Franks: Pregnancy from rape is rare During a hearing on a controversial abortion bill, Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., said the incidence of pregnancy from rape is "very low." His comments sparked a tough response from women at the hearing.

Franks%27 comment came amid debate on bill to ban abortions nationwide after 20 weeks of gestation

Democrats criticized Franks%27 comments%2C and the party%27s political wing used the issue to attack GOP candidates across the country

Franks said GOP leaders still support his bill

PHOENIX -- U.S. Rep. Trent Franks was engaged in damage control late Wednesday after his comments about rape and pregnancy during a Capitol Hill hearing earlier in the day prompted an outcry from Democrats, who seized on his words as more evidence of what they say is a GOP "war on women."

Franks, R-Ariz., said his critics had taken his comments out of context and were using the controversy, which reverberated through news outlets and social media, to distract from "real issues" related to his legislation. His bill calls for a nationwide ban on abortions after 20 weeks. The legislation passed the Judiciary Committee along party lines and is expected to go to a House floor vote next week.

Franks said during the hearing that he would not support an exception for victims of rape because they rarely get pregnant.

"The incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy (is) very low," Franks said, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the story.

Democrats on the committee immediately criticized his assertion, and the party's political wing used the issue to attack GOP candidates across the country. Franks' comments raised the specter of a series of controversies last year that tanked the campaigns of several GOP congressional candidates and hurt presidential candidate Mitt Romney's standing with female voters. The gender gap was considered a contributing factor in his loss to President Barack Obama.

Franks said he went to House leadership soon after the committee hearing and clarified his remarks.

He told The Arizona Republic that he meant that the number of pregnancies resulting from rape and carried past 20 weeks is low.

"Usually, if a victim of rape intends to abort, she doesn't wait for the child to enter the sixth month," Franks said in a 40-minute telephone interview from Washington in which he sounded shaken. "Once this bill engages, the question of rape or incest has long since been dealt with in almost every case."

He said that GOP leaders still support his bill.

Estimates of pregnancy from rape vary widely. One study concluded that there are as many as 32,000 per year across the country, or about in 5 percent of rapes.

Franks could not provide research to TheRepublic on the exact number of pregnancies terminated past 20 weeks that are related to rape, but he said only about 1 percent of all abortions in the United States are for that reason, so it would make sense there would be fewer late-term procedures. The 1 percent figure comes from surveys in 1997 and 2004 by the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research organization that advocates for sexual and reproductive rights.

Franks said Democrats are trying to distract from the real issue: Fetuses capable of feeling pain are being aborted, which his bill aims to prevent. The issue of fetal pain itself is a subject of scientific debate.

"I think that's such an incredibly unfair thing, that all of a sudden because someone is arrogant enough to inject a false issue and try to distort the issue and make it look like we don't care about the women, that somehow they're the heroes," Franks said. "The real question is not whether these children entering their sixth month of gestation are capable of feeling pain. The real question is: Are we?"

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee used Franks' remarks to send out fundraising e-mails and called on Republican candidates around the country to respond.

"Yet again, House Republicans are trying to prove that they're the most extreme, anti-woman legislature in American history," spokeswoman Emily Bittner said in a written statement to TheRepublic. "Congressman Franks and House Republicans are blindly focusing on the tired ideological battles of the past like a woman's right to choose, rather than focusing on problem-solving."

At least one Republican candidate responded by slamming Franks.

"He's a moron, and he proves that stupid has no specific political affiliation," Gabriel Gomez, the Republican candidate for the open Senate seat in Massachusetts, told ABC News.

The National Republican Congressional Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Franks, a social conservative who has made restricting abortion a mainstay of his 10-year congressional career, introduced a similar bill last session that was restricted to Washington. It failed.

This year, Franks expanded the bill to cover abortions nationwide. He said he was emboldened by public outrage over the case of Philadelphia doctor Kermit Gosnell, who was convicted of murder in a trial that included grisly details of abortions performed long after the state's 24-week limit in a filthy and unlicensed clinic.

Franks' legislation comes as the abortion debate rages in Arizona. The Legislature has been considering mandating unannounced inspections of abortion clinics. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is weighing an Arizona law that strips Medicaid funding from doctors and clinics that perform abortions.

Caroline Heldman, chairwoman of the politics department at Occidental College in Southern California, said comments like Franks' go viral because abortion is a highly charged wedge issue.

Heldman said that to many people, Franks' comments sounded like those of former Rep. Todd Akin. A Missouri Republican, Akin lost his 2012 Senate race after claiming women's bodies can prevent a pregnancy after a "legitimate rape." That claim is not supported by scientific research, and Akin later apologized.

"(Franks is) being compared to Todd Akin because any case of rape, if you want to severely limit a woman's ability to get an abortion, is too many," said Heldman, who says she was an anti-abortion demonstrator as a teen but is now an abortion-rights supporter. "Saying the incidence of it is very low — he's right. Percentage-wise, it's very low. But we're talking about people here."

Heldman said Republican leaders "wish that lawmakers and candidates would stop putting their foot in their mouth" because women turn out in elections more than men and typically are more in favor of reproductive rights.

But Franks said it was a "malicious distortion" to compare him to Akin.

He said it's Democrats who hurt women. Franks pointed to their opposition to his legislation that would prohibit abortions based on gender selection. The prevalence of that practice in the United States is disputed.

"They call it a war on women. But let me tell you, the same Democrats that call it that, half of these little babies that are aborted when they can feel pain up until the last moments of their life are little women," he said. "And (Democrats) won't even support a bill that will protect an unborn child from being aborted based on if (she is) a girl instead of a boy. Now that's a war on women."