Bryan Fischer
Akin: Hyenas in the GOP ignore medical science, eat their own
By Bryan Fischer
Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"
The slavering, slobbering hyenas in the Republican party, by tearing at the flesh of their own senatorial candidate Todd Akin, are doing their best to blow their shot at taking control of the Senate. By eating their own, they are consuming themselves. And they seem too brainless to know it.
You expect a Jaws-like attack of this nature from winger-left liberal sharks, who mercilessly go for the carotid artery whenever they smell blood in the water. But this mindless, freakish and frenzied forcible assault on one of their own by the GOP and its allies in the conservative punditocracy could be the thing that hands the Missouri senate seat to the hapless Claire McCaskill.
If he loses this race, it will be the fault of party poobahs, not Todd Akin. One of the party leaders actually suggested last night that the GOP try to run a third-party challenge to their own candidate. That would be a certifiably guaranteed way to forfeit victory to the opposition. You can ask Bill Clinton all about that.
Akin's words, for which he apologized even though he had no need to, were right. He was entirely correct to say that pregnancies in cases of forcible rape are rare. Even if the exaggerated figures of the pro-abortion medical community are accurate, pregnancies due to rape amount to just 0.005% of all pregnancies. That's rare in anybody's book. Because of the horror of assault rape — which ought to be a capital crime again in the U.S. as it was for most of our history — we can be grateful for that.
Akin has been pilloried by members of his own party for suggesting that in cases of forcible rape (which is what he was talking about), the trauma of the event may interfere with conception. This, he suggested, is one of the reasons why pregnancy due to rape is rare. He did not, by the way, say that pregnancy was impossible in rape, just rare.
Unfortunately for the nattering nabobs of negativism who think Akin is some kind of medical Neanderthal, the London Daily Mail has a headline story TODAY which has this as the very first paragraph: "Stress can make women infertile, research has revealed. Scientists found that those with high levels of a stress hormone stop ovulating and are therefore unable to conceive."
Who look like the dumb ones now?
The Mail article goes on, "The research was presented yesterday at the annual conference of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology in Prague." I'm going with Todd Akin and the European Society for Human Reproduction on this one. How about you? Are you going to side with Todd Akin and modern science, or with the jackals who are trying to put Akin out of the Democrats' misery?
Here's the American Society for Reproductive Medicine: "In an occasional woman, too much stress can change her hormone levels and therefore cause the time when she releases an egg to become delayed or not take place at all." Sounds like maybe her body can shut down the process after all.
How about the New York Times, the Bible of wingers on the left? Here's the headline of a May 11, 2011 feature article: "Lowering Stress Improves Fertility Treatment." The article refers to findings published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, and quotes Dr. Alice D. Domar, a psychologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston who serves as director of mind-body services at Boston IVF, a large fertility center.
Said Dr. Domar, "If you're really stressed out and depressed, the body seems to sense that's not a good time to get pregnant." Hmm. Sound suspiciously like the body shutting down, no?
Dr. Domar's study involved giving infertile patients therapeutic counseling along with medical advice. Her findings? After five mind-body sessions, "52 percent of the women participating in the stress reduction program had become pregnant, compared with 20 percent in the control group."
Shall we try Psychology Today, again not exactly the house organ of the vast, rightwing conspiracy? Hmm, shall we? An August 20, 2010 piece by Dr. Connie Shapiro, professor of family studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says the same thing.
Citing current research into levels of the enzyme alpha-amylase, a biological indicator of stress, she reports that women with the highest concentrations of this enzyme "were 12 percent less likely to become pregnant each month than those with the lowest levels."
Shapiro's conclusion? "The researchers say theirs is the first study to link a biomarker for stress with delayed conception in normal, healthy women, and they suggest that identifying ways to reduce or manage stress may be a low-tech solution for some couples diagnosed with infertility."
Shapiro quotes the above-mentioned Alice Domar, who said, "This is one more piece of the puzzle that's adding up to the same conclusion: that stress is not necessarily a good thing for our reproductive system."
The bottom line for Shapiro? There is now "scientific evidence that stress delays time of conception in healthy women...even low levels of stress can have an impact on conception." In fact, she adds, "[S]tress is the one consistent factor that shows an effect on how long it takes to get pregnant, of all the lifestyle factors studied to date."
Who knew? Well, Todd Akin, for one.
There is a sad lesson on loyalty here from this irrational rush to judgment on the part of Republicans. Joe Biden has been a walking gaffe machine since 1988, and yet the members of his party have his back to this day. Todd Akin uses one word that was grossly misinterpreted by his enemies, and the members of his own party throw his carcass to the jackals.
Now that Akin has decided to stay in the race, as he should, ignoring the hysterical bellows and the pitchforks, the ruling class Republicans will have to eat some crow and reverse themselves by resuming support for Akin's candidacy. Certainly they cannot be so stupid as to commit hari-kiri by withholding help because they're in some kind of snit. Can they?
The lesson from all of this: if you're a Republican, and you want a friend in the party, you'd better buy a dog. And he better be a big one, because you'll need him to protect you from your own kind.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
August 23, 2012
Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"
The slavering, slobbering hyenas in the Republican party, by tearing at the flesh of their own senatorial candidate Todd Akin, are doing their best to blow their shot at taking control of the Senate. By eating their own, they are consuming themselves. And they seem too brainless to know it.
You expect a Jaws-like attack of this nature from winger-left liberal sharks, who mercilessly go for the carotid artery whenever they smell blood in the water. But this mindless, freakish and frenzied forcible assault on one of their own by the GOP and its allies in the conservative punditocracy could be the thing that hands the Missouri senate seat to the hapless Claire McCaskill.
If he loses this race, it will be the fault of party poobahs, not Todd Akin. One of the party leaders actually suggested last night that the GOP try to run a third-party challenge to their own candidate. That would be a certifiably guaranteed way to forfeit victory to the opposition. You can ask Bill Clinton all about that.
Akin's words, for which he apologized even though he had no need to, were right. He was entirely correct to say that pregnancies in cases of forcible rape are rare. Even if the exaggerated figures of the pro-abortion medical community are accurate, pregnancies due to rape amount to just 0.005% of all pregnancies. That's rare in anybody's book. Because of the horror of assault rape — which ought to be a capital crime again in the U.S. as it was for most of our history — we can be grateful for that.
Akin has been pilloried by members of his own party for suggesting that in cases of forcible rape (which is what he was talking about), the trauma of the event may interfere with conception. This, he suggested, is one of the reasons why pregnancy due to rape is rare. He did not, by the way, say that pregnancy was impossible in rape, just rare.
Unfortunately for the nattering nabobs of negativism who think Akin is some kind of medical Neanderthal, the London Daily Mail has a headline story TODAY which has this as the very first paragraph: "Stress can make women infertile, research has revealed. Scientists found that those with high levels of a stress hormone stop ovulating and are therefore unable to conceive."
Who look like the dumb ones now?
The Mail article goes on, "The research was presented yesterday at the annual conference of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology in Prague." I'm going with Todd Akin and the European Society for Human Reproduction on this one. How about you? Are you going to side with Todd Akin and modern science, or with the jackals who are trying to put Akin out of the Democrats' misery?
Here's the American Society for Reproductive Medicine: "In an occasional woman, too much stress can change her hormone levels and therefore cause the time when she releases an egg to become delayed or not take place at all." Sounds like maybe her body can shut down the process after all.
How about the New York Times, the Bible of wingers on the left? Here's the headline of a May 11, 2011 feature article: "Lowering Stress Improves Fertility Treatment." The article refers to findings published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, and quotes Dr. Alice D. Domar, a psychologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston who serves as director of mind-body services at Boston IVF, a large fertility center.
Said Dr. Domar, "If you're really stressed out and depressed, the body seems to sense that's not a good time to get pregnant." Hmm. Sound suspiciously like the body shutting down, no?
Dr. Domar's study involved giving infertile patients therapeutic counseling along with medical advice. Her findings? After five mind-body sessions, "52 percent of the women participating in the stress reduction program had become pregnant, compared with 20 percent in the control group."
Shall we try Psychology Today, again not exactly the house organ of the vast, rightwing conspiracy? Hmm, shall we? An August 20, 2010 piece by Dr. Connie Shapiro, professor of family studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says the same thing.
Citing current research into levels of the enzyme alpha-amylase, a biological indicator of stress, she reports that women with the highest concentrations of this enzyme "were 12 percent less likely to become pregnant each month than those with the lowest levels."
Shapiro's conclusion? "The researchers say theirs is the first study to link a biomarker for stress with delayed conception in normal, healthy women, and they suggest that identifying ways to reduce or manage stress may be a low-tech solution for some couples diagnosed with infertility."
Shapiro quotes the above-mentioned Alice Domar, who said, "This is one more piece of the puzzle that's adding up to the same conclusion: that stress is not necessarily a good thing for our reproductive system."
The bottom line for Shapiro? There is now "scientific evidence that stress delays time of conception in healthy women...even low levels of stress can have an impact on conception." In fact, she adds, "[S]tress is the one consistent factor that shows an effect on how long it takes to get pregnant, of all the lifestyle factors studied to date."
Who knew? Well, Todd Akin, for one.
There is a sad lesson on loyalty here from this irrational rush to judgment on the part of Republicans. Joe Biden has been a walking gaffe machine since 1988, and yet the members of his party have his back to this day. Todd Akin uses one word that was grossly misinterpreted by his enemies, and the members of his own party throw his carcass to the jackals.
Now that Akin has decided to stay in the race, as he should, ignoring the hysterical bellows and the pitchforks, the ruling class Republicans will have to eat some crow and reverse themselves by resuming support for Akin's candidacy. Certainly they cannot be so stupid as to commit hari-kiri by withholding help because they're in some kind of snit. Can they?
The lesson from all of this: if you're a Republican, and you want a friend in the party, you'd better buy a dog. And he better be a big one, because you'll need him to protect you from your own kind.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
