It is 2012 and the Republican Candidate for the U.S. Senate, in the State of Missouri, a state with two major North American cities, St. Louis and Kansas City, a Congressman named Todd Akin with a Masters  in Divinity, explained his opposition to a woman's right to a medically safe abortion under all circumstances, including Rape by saying that pregnancy resulting from rape "from what I understand from doctors, its really rare.  If it is legimitate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down."

Now the whole discussion in the media is whether or not he still has a chance to win the election.  Whether the religious right(the media calls them "Christians" but Akin's views on women appear to be closer to  those of the Taliban than even most conservative Christians) can make up for his loss of money from  National Republican sources. 

Forget about science.  Forget about the history of denying and trivializing rape.  Calculate the odds for and against Akin  and let it pass as a blip in the news. 

Akin's background is interesting.  He comes from an old industrial capitalist family which  owned  a St. Louis Steel manufacturing company.   This isn't in the popular imaginatin the stuff out of which Scopes Trial jurors are made

 His  great grandfather, grandfather, and father all went to Harvard, symbol to at least some of his supporters of the evil Eastern secular establishment. 

 He didn't go to Harvard, but to a Poyltechnic Institute and then to  the Covenant Theological Seminary where he got his Masters degree in Divinity.   The family  business, LaClede Steel, which he managed at one time, is now bankrupt, but he has been in politics/religion since 1988, crusading to put God and the Bible back into politics, government, stating that he is on God's side, God is on his side, and a powerful liberal establishment is against both.

I doubt he has any ideas about the de-industrialization has brought down old establishments like his family's steel company and cost millions of workers jobs. He probably doesn't even understand that in the larger sense his family's loss was his candidate Mitt Romney's gain.   Since he has stated that it is God who is behind all of  the nation's success, perhaps  he sees this also as part of a a divine plan, or maybe punishment  for

I don't claim to know Akin.  I hadn't even heard of him before this political moment.  I don't even know if the comment of one of his close associates, that both of them belong to religous study groups "far to the right" of Rush Limbuagh, is true, but it makes me shudder. and it should make most of us shudder.  

However it may try to disasociate itself from Akin's statements, the  National Republican platform position on abortion as it has been reported  isn't really different than his.  The only difference is that they market that position to selected audiences without appearing to be sitcom stupid, as Akin has.    

Imagine what could happen if a Republican government came to power next year, a goverment filled with many clones of  Akins, forty years after Roe v. Wade.  It would take one more Supreme Court justice to reverse that decision and they would have that justice in a few years

 Such a government even before abortion became illegal again in the U.S.  would be as likely to enforce the law to protect abortion providers and clinics from violence as Southern segregationist governments were to protect Blacks from the KKK. 

We should really be outraged at  what this represents in terms of  the elemental human rights of half of the population/   .How dare Akin and the National Republican party seek to control women in this way, to intimidate them back to a time of fear and shame about their own bodies, a double standard about sexuality.

 Religious women, conservative women, Republican women, choose not to have an abortion, and they are not forced  by anyone to have an abortion.   Such women are free  choose certainly to  oppose Rape Shield laws, domestic violence laws, even believe with Akin that there are "legitimate" and "illegitimate rapes" 

 But they and men like Akin, Ryan, and Romney, who will never bear children,   don't have the right to use the power of the state to  force those policies and their consequences on all women.  If they are successful politically, they will restrict the real freedom of all women and further poison  the political atmosphere.

There are large numbers of religious people of all faiths,  including of course believing Christians of many denominations, for whom religion is way to communicate and cooperate with  their fellow men and women, not a means to dominate and manipulate them.  I have known Christian ministers who were CPUSA members an activists and of course many ministers and priests and rabbis who were and are politically part of the broad left.  They don't want to put theology into the Constitution or turn the U.S. into a theocratic state in any way. And we should welcome them in joining us to stand against those who do. 

Akin and the National Republican Party either out of cynicism, fanaticism, or self-righteous ignorance, are doing far more damage to religion generally than any atheist by associating religion.  That is why serious people of faith, not those who use religion either as a crutch for themselves or a club to use against others, have as great an interest as non religious people in defeating the  Republicans at all levels in the coming elections