Ignorance

"This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased." -- Charles Dickens

All the posts I've seen about the Todd Akin affair in Missouri seem to focus on his deplorable opinions about the availability of abortion. 

I'm not surprised at his opinions.  He merely said out loud what the majority of the Republican Party management already believes.  What amazes me is the lack of comment on his level of ignorance.  He actually seems to believe that a woman's physiology can tell a rape from some other kind of sexual encounter, and can produce a "magic juice" which will prevent pregnancy.  Notice that he didn't apologize for the comment about the female physical reaction to rape; he apologized (and so he should!) for the term "legitimate rape."

There is a "magic juice" which will prevent pregnancy, but you have to buy it at a pharmacy; it's called the "morning after pill."  And many of the people who are horrified at the legal availability of abortion want to ban it, too.

Even Mao Tse-Tung admitted that "women hold up half the sky."  Women are half the human race, and Rep. Akin has no clue how the female physiology operates, even though he is a married man.  (Wikipedia doesn't mention any children.)  Even more appalling, this man is on the House Science Committee.  Based on his public statements, his understanding of human physiology is non-existent.  His Wikipedia bio says he's an "engineer", but when you look at the article detail you see that his degree is in "management engineering," whatever that is. 

When a man this ignorant about the basic workings of the human body is not only elected to Congress but assigned to the House Science Committee, this country is in very deep trouble.  I've been disturbed for some time at the growing rejection of science in many quarters - in some cases because our education system fails to teach it; in other cases because people like Rep. Akin (who also supports a Master of Divinity degree) choose instead to believe the Bible, and to assume that anything not in the Bible isn't true.  (Note:  I have no actual evidence that Rep. Akin is a Biblical fundamentalist, I am making an assumption.) 

Science got us to the top of the heap, but we won't stay there if we walk away from science.  I've made a hobby all my life of studying the Middle Ages, a period when science didn't exist and religion ruled.  We could go back there, folks.  We could indeed.