Todd Akin: ‘Throw rape victims in a river; If they drown, it was legitimate rape’

Missouri Republican Todd Akin, under fire for his comments declaring that victims of “legitimate rape” couldn’t get pregnant, tried again to clarify his comments today on Fox news.

“All I was trying to say is that, how are we to tell whether a woman who cries rape is telling the truth?” Akin told Sean Hannity. “From what I understand from talking to doctors and scientists, there is only one way. You take the alleged rape victim down to the river, or some other large body of water, weight her down with some chains or large stones, and you throw her in. If she floats, she’s a lying slut and the rape was not legitimate. But if she sinks and drowns, then she was telling the truth, and was legitimately raped.”

Meanwhile, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who, along with Akin cosponsored a bill that would have narrowed the exceptions to the laws banning federal funding for abortion from all cases of rape to cases of “forcible rape,” said that he stands behind his “forcible rape” bill.

“You know, medicine is not an exact science,” Ryan said. “But we are learning all the time. According to a doctor I talked to, if a rape is legitimate, a gal’s lady parts have a magical way of shutting down, blocking the rape-sperm from reaching her pure and unspoiled eggs. If the rape is illegitimate, however, well then she might get pregnant. Of course, there’s always the possibility that she might not be really pregnant. Instead she could be possessed by demons or suffering from an imbalance of bodily humors, perhaps caused by a toad or a small dwarf living in her stomach. In such cases, from what I understand, she can be treated by sticking a few leeches to her face, and she should be just fine.”

When asked to identify the "doctor" who'd given him the information, Ryan answered: "He has a practice in York, Pennsylvania. I believe his name was Theodoric."