PA GOP Senate Candidate Refuses To Distinguish Pregnancy Due To Rape, Consensual Sex

I am beginning to realize that current-day GOPers are from another planet, or at least another country. In Pennsylvania, GOP Senate candidate Tom Smith responded to Rep. Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" atrocity by referring to his, Smith's, own daughter's situation. Here's Eric Kleefeld at TPM:

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“What that congressman said I do not agree with at all. He should have never said anything like that,” Smith told reporters Monday, according to the Harrisburg Patriot-News, during a Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon in Harrisburg Monday — referring to Akin’s suggestion that women’s bodies can block a pregnancy from rape.

“I lived something similar to that with my own family,” Smith said. He then described his daughter’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy — from consensual sex.

“She chose life, and I commend her for that. She knew my views but fortunately for me … she chose the way I thought. Now don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t rape.”

Smith affirmed that he believed his daughter’s pregnancy from consensual sex was similar to a rape. “Put yourself in a father’s position, yes, I mean it is similar.”

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Don't worry; I won't get you wrong, Mr. Smith (who I sincerely hope DOESN'T go to Washington). I won't misunderstand you when you liken your daughter's consensual sex with her boyfriend to a violent sexual assault against her person... though you may find your daughter doesn't share my willingness not to misunderstand.

Rape is rape. Rape is assault. Pregnancy from rape is an injury from assault, as surely as a bullet wound to the head. No one would expect a gunshot victim to keep the bullet in place if there were a way to remove it. In cases of rape, there is a medically reliable way to remove at least the physical consequences, and believe me, Mr. Smith, it is obvious you can't even begin to imagine the emotional consequences of rape.

You have absolutely no right to make the facile comparison you tossed out. I question whether you even had the right to influence your daughter's decision to keep her boyfriend's child, but I admit that's between you and her. What is not yours to decide or even to influence is whether a rape victim must bear her rapist's child. You have no right. You have no right. You have no right.