In 2012, Republican congressman Todd Akin introduced the world to the concept of “legitimate rape,” in which he claimed that when a person is actually, truly sexually assaulted, they won’t get pregnant because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
A decade later, Republican congressional candidate Yesli Vega is bringing back the concept. While campaigning across Virginia last month in her bid to unseat incumbent Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), Vega was asked if she believed it is harder for a woman to get pregnant if she has been raped. According to Axios, which obtained audio of the incident, Vega first responded by saying, “Well, maybe because there’s so much going on in the body,” then hemmed and hawed a little, saying that she hadn’t “seen any studies” about that. But she ultimately landed near agreement: “It wouldn’t surprise me,” she said. “Because it’s not something that’s happening organically. You’re forcing it.”
