Former Congressman Todd Akin, the Missouri Republican who died late Sunday, sparked one of the biggest political firestorms in the country during the 2012 election year, when he claimed that “legitimate rape” doesn’t cause pregnancy — thus implying that women who seek abortions claiming to have been impregnated by rape are lying. That medically absurd claim sunk Akin’s U.S. Senate candidacy.
In hindsight, Akin’s fall is a measure of just how far the Republican Party has sunk now. He became a pariah in the party with his remark, to the point that Republicans ceded the Senate seat rather than defend him. All indications are that, today, a power-obsessed and ethically rudderless GOP would rally around an Akin-like figure no matter what he’d said.
Akin, 74, died late Sunday after battling cancer for years, according to a statement from his family. In 2012, he was a conservative Christian congressman representing suburban St. Louis and an apparent shoo-in to unseat struggling Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.
