GOP Women Shocked, Shocked

Carla Marinucci, at the SF Chron, went out and got the quotes of a life time following Representative Todd Aikin (MO) comments on live television that victims of “legitimate rape” didn’t get pregnant.  She went straight to high-rolling GOP, female fund raisers.

Jillian Manus Salzman, a powerhouse donor to Mitt Romney‘s presidential campaign and a proud pro-choice Republican, said she screamed when she heard Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri, a GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate, say that victims of “legitimate” rape rarely get pregnant.

“I was so appalled, so angry – I can’t tell you,” said the Atherton literary agent and philanthropist who has co-hosted major Romney fundraisers in the Bay Area. “His opinion is not just hurtful to others. It’s dangerous.”

and

Harmeet Dhillon, head of San Francisco’s Republican Party and a candidate for state Senate, says she is appalled by Rep. Todd Akin’s comments and “embarrassed for my party that we have a candidate like that.”

and

California Republican U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Emken, who is antiabortion and the challenger to incumbent Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, was horrified by Akin’s remarks, which she called “outrageous and indefensible.”

As the mother of two daughters, “I condemn his offensive statements in the strongest possible language,” she said in a statement issued Monday.

It would be easy to be snide about such comments, or more exactly, not the comments but the shallowness of mind that can utter them.  As Capt Renault, in Casablanca, says after Rick protests being closed down: “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!”  Just so, these GOP women are shocked to find an ignorant, anti-woman politician in their party.

Todd Aiken is not a little skin-tag, easily removed from an otherwise flawless body.  He is the right thumb of the right hand of the body that produced him.  The assault on women, not to mention crippling scientific ignorance, has been the core of the current leaders of the Republican Party for many years.  How can these good hearted and undoubtedly smart women not acknowledge this?

Ms. Salzman threw a big fund raiser for Ryan who “Like many Republican ... opposes abortion even when a woman has been raped.”  And yet she is outraged.

 Mr. Ryan has said he doesn’t believe in a rape exception when outlawing abortion, and he worked with Mr. Akin in the House in trying to narrow the definition of rape so Medicaid would pay for fewer abortions of poor women. Mitt Romney says he supports a rape exception, but many of the politicians he has invited to speak at next week’s Republican convention disagree with him.

Women!  And men, too.  Please, please, please do your homework before raising gazillions for those who have power (over us) in mind. Ask yourselves:  do I want the lives of  my son or daughter to be rearranged by the proposals and people I am now funding?  Will I be able to stand before those I love and say, “I didn’t know,” when radical actions —promised in the party platform— ruin lives?