It’s hard to believe, but it has been almost two years already since former Missouri Rep. Todd Akin torpedoed his political career by suggesting that victims of “legitimate rape” rarely get pregnant. He later apologized and still lost his Senate campaign, but now he’s back in the spotlight.
Next week, Aikin’s memoir, Firing Back: Taking on the Party Bosses and Media Elite to Protect Our Faith and Freedom, hits bookstores and in it, he mentions a few regrets. According to Politico, which obtained an excerpt of the book, Aikin says one of those regrets is taping a campaign ad apologizing for his comments.
“By asking the public at large for forgiveness, I was validating the willful misinterpretation of what I had said.” Aikin wrote.
During that infamous television interview in August 2012, Aikin suggested that, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
He claims that there is science to back what he said and the comments were “directed to the impact of stress on fertilization. This is something fertility doctors debate and discuss.” He continues, “Doubt me? Google ‘stress and infertility,’ and you will find a library of research on the subject.”
Aikin also blames the liberal media for the way it was reported and goes on further to continue voicing his opposition to abortion. He wrote that he hoped he could have done more to “end this evil,” which “easily trumps slavery as the greatest moral evil in American history.”
If the comments didn’t get national attention, he believes he may have beaten his opponent, Sen. Claire McCaskill, who was re-elected.
The book, which features a foreword by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, will be released on July 15.