Todd Akin is an idiot, but not for the reason you think

Well, folks, this one has been percolating around in my brain since the Todd Akin flap began, but with all the upheaval surrounding changing jobs, I haven't had time to post.

When Todd Akin said that in cases of "legitimate" rape, the woman's body has ways of "shutting things down" to prevent conception, he was actually right.  I'm not sure how much knowledge base he has about this.  Probably he heard something once and filed it away, and when confronted with this question, his brain dug up that little tidbit, and he spit it out in a most unfortunate way.  Thus we gain more proof for the adage that nothing is more dangerous than a little knowledge.

The Catholic Church is regularly mocked and excoriated for promoting Natural Family Planning in its many forms.  This is NOT, I repeat, NOT the rhythm method, and one of the quickest ways to get my hair on fire is to equate the two.  The several methods of Natural Family Planning that are out there (Creighton, Billings or sympto-thermal, and the newer Marquette Method) are all thoroughly scientific, based on biology and the study of each individual woman's cycle.  Rhythm was a calendar-based method that assumed all women's bodies worked exactly the same and had cycles that all behaved identically.  It's no wonder that the most common epithet for its users became "parents."

I used the sympto-thermal method for a substantial chunk of my reproductive years, so I know whereof I speak.  With this method, a woman determines her fertility status each day by measuring her basal body temperature and evaluating her cervical mucus, whose texture changes throughout the month depending on where she is in her cycle.  A woman educated in this method and using it correctly knows exactly when ovulation is approaching, and exactly when it has occurred.  The same is true for Creighton and Marquette, just the markers read and methods of obtaining information vary.

Todd Akin would not have received so much opprobrium if more people in this country were educated about how a woman's body actually works.  Because any woman or couple that charts their fertility can tell you about times when a huge amount of stress delayed or even completely prevented ovulation for that month.  They can probably even dig up the chart and show it to you!  Illness can have the same effect.  I don't know if I could still find it, but I have a chart somewhere that shows the month I had a strep infection so severe that it took three courses of antibiotics to kill it, and I never ovulated.  My body was so sick and stressed out by that illness that it did not trust itself to support a baby!

Akin probably at some point heard someone talk about how stress can delay ovulation.  In our current society, where fertility discussions have been in the forefront of consciousness for a couple decades, it is not surprising that he might hear this somewhere.  Perhaps he has even dealt with this issue personally.  So when the question arose, his mind went into the database and found this bit of information, and he said what he said.  Here's the thing.... he wasn't wrong.  A woman who has suffered a sexual assault is likely under the greatest amount of stress in her lifetime.  I am sure many women's cycles have been disrupted by that.  That disruption would have a protective effect against pregnancy by delaying ovulation.  According to a study on PubMed from the National Institutes of Health, the rate of pregnancy from rape is five percent.  Clearly we are not dealing with the majority of rape victims when talking about this issue, and I would imagine the rate is going lower with emergency contraception being offered to rape victims in the ER as standard procedure.  (P.S.  Catholic teaching is in no way against using contraceptives in this case.  A victim has the right to defend herself against her attacker in any way she has available.  The intent of using EC is to suppress ovulation and thicken cervical mucus to block sperm from entering the uterus, which are the two primary functionalities of oral contraceptives.  In a case where a woman has not consented to sexual activity, she has the right to pursue means of preventing pregnancy.  If the unfortunate secondary effect of preventing implantation of an already-fertilized egg should take place, the principle of double-effect applies.)  Any woman that finds herself pregnant from rape deserves compassion and guidance, and nothing Todd Akin said or did denied that reality.

The other point on which he has been attacked regards his use of the terminology "legitimate rape."  For all the people upset by that, oh please, get over yourselves.  There are plenty of cases that feminist advocates and irresponsible women want to call rape that are not.  Getting drunk and making stupid choices, then regretting it the next day, is NOT rape.  Consenting to sex and then changing your mind in the middle of it is NOT rape.  This is rape:  a man who knows that you do not want to have sex forcing himself on you.  I seriously cannot believe that in the post-Duke lacrosse age, anyone would object to distinguishing legitimate rapes from illegitimate claims of rape.

So now that I have spent several paragraphs defending him, why do I still think Todd Akin is an idiot?  I have two reasons.  First, if you are going to be a politician on the national level in the United States of America, you had better have your answers straight and ready to go on the issue of abortion.  If you are not ready to answer any question about your stance on abortion, which is an issue that gets hashed to death in every single election, intelligently and with references, you are an idiot!  Second, he has damaged the Republican bid to gain a majority in the Senate so badly, and he is such a target now, that he should have stepped down in time to allow another candidate to run.  He should have bowed out and put the success of the greater mission above his own personal fortunes.

You lay down with dogs, you get fleas

I live in Arizona.  I love my state.  But, like any other place, we have our challenges.

Unfortunately, conservative politics attracts certain extremists.  I have basically stopped going to conservative political events because white supremacist organizations invariably show up.  It pisses me off that my honestly held convictions and traditional beliefs are tainted by these people, and until conservative organizers do a better job of keeping those people out of events, my family will not be participating.

Before anyone says that maybe I should just become more liberal, remember that anarchists attach themselves to liberal political events.  They break windows, terrorize businesses, and burn down every Starbucks they can find.  I know that those people do not represent the mainstream thought of the majority of people on the left side of the political aisle.  So kindly grant me the same courtesy.

Last week, one of the most disgusting denizens of the neo-Nazi movement in Arizona killed himself.  Would that he had just started with himself, but no, he also murdered his girlfriend, her daughter, her 18 month old granddaughter, and the baby's father, who was a young Army veteran who had done time in Afghanistan.

So here's the thing, and I am fully prepared to be called a horrible bitch for this.... I don't see the girlfriend as much of a victim in all this.  Her daughters were.  Her daughter's fiance was.  Her granddaughter was the worst, most powerless victim of all.

Lisa Mederos knew JT Ready for six months before she allowed him to move into her home.  There is no way he kept his white supremacist tendencies, National Socialist Party membership, and advocacy of landmines along the border, secret from her that long.  Especially as all these things were public knowledge discussed in all of our local media outlets.  Ready was running for Sheriff in Pinal County, and so was a public figure.  She knew what he was and what he thought.

And she still let that slimy piece of shit move into the home where her daughters lived with her.  What kind of mother does that?

According to news stories, Ready had lived there about six months.  That means that he moved in sometime in December.  Mederos called Gilbert police months after the fact to report that Ready had choked her in August 2011.  Excuse me, but that is BEFORE she let him move in.  So she also knew he was violent and abusive to women in general, and her in particular, BEFORE she let him move into the home where her daughters lived with her.  Again I ask, what kind of mother does that?

In the short time he lived there, Ready made the Mederos daughters miserable and forced both of them to move out.  He ordered Lisa to make her daughters move out.  OK, so the violent neo-Nazi you just allowed to move in to your home, who has already choked you at least once, dumps bottled water over your head when you buy the wrong brand, and is now freeloading off you because he can't even manage to not get fired from his crappy minimum-wage job at AutoZone, orders you to force your daughters out of your home in favor of him..... and YOU DO IT?!

I'm sorry, no one can possibly be THAT good in bed.

So, call me all the awful names you want, but this is a case of a woman paying the price for her own disgusting choices.  There are dozens of cases here in Arizona, and all over the country, of what I call "death by Mommy's boyfriend."  I am sick of it.  I am utterly, fiercely sick of children harmed or killed because their mothers, for some reason, just cannot exist without some man in bed next to them.  Violent criminals, selfish freeloaders, drug users, serial domestic abusers..... too many women allow these bastards to live with their babies.  If you can't even muster the strength that a mother bird shows defending her nest, when you invite slimebags into your life, watch them harm your children, and then keep the slimebag around AFTER he hurts your children, that, to me, constitutes burning up your mother card.

I know that it goes the other way too.  There was one heinous case where a dad's girlfriend killed the children after CPS left them in dad's custody in violation of a court order.  So I know that dads can invite evil people into their kids' lives too.  (Ask me about some of my dad's previous girlfriends...ugh.  ;-p )  But we mothers are the ones who carry these babies under our hearts for nine months, we nourish them from our own bodies.  Our bond is just different, and mothers who violate it are the lowest of all creatures to me.  Women who stand by and let someone hurt their babies, are, to me, in many ways, worse than the perpetrators themselves.  The perp has no bond of trust or love or commitment to that baby.  Mothers do.  Our babies trust us to be willing to lay down our lives to protect them, and these bitches won't even suffer inconvenience for theirs.

Lest anyone think I would excuse abuse by biological fathers as opposed to shack up boyfriends, while I will not go into detail, our family had a brief struggle with behavior that crossed the line a few years ago.  Anyone who knows me knows how wrapped up in my husband I am... I love him passionately and my life with him is everything I ever hoped for myself and my children.  But I told him he needed to leave our home, go to his mother's, and figure out his shit or not come back.  I will not allow anyone to be abusive with my children, even if his name is Dad.  Thankfully, we solved our issues as a family, he has never repeated such behavior, and we were all able to move on.  Lest anyone think badly of Craig, let me assure you that behavior on my part was largely to blame for his anger and loss of control.  So it really was a family issue that we needed to solve together.  But regardless of my faults, nothing on Earth justifies anyone hurting my babies, and I was fully prepared to accept the demise of my married home if that was what it took.

The "babies" in this case may have been adults, but so what?  Lisa Mederos allowed JT Ready into her home knowing what he was, at the same time her girls were living there.  She allowed him to stay after he kicked her babies out.  She chose him over her children.

At the time she died, she had finally woken up and was trying to break up with him and get rid of him.  But what the hell took her so long?  Unfortunately, she paid the ultimate price, as women who entangle themselves with abusers often do, especially when they finally try to break away.  In that, I grant her a modicum of victimhood.  She figured it out too late, but she should have had a chance to try and start again.  Ready took that away from her, and he had no right to do so.  He stole the future of three generations of one family.  Would that he had only ended his own future, as that was going nowhere good anyway.