Huff Post: Rev. Martha Spong.

I’ve been speechless for the past couple of days.

I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the words Todd Akin used to describe rape. I’ve been thinking and reading the words of others in their responses to him.

On religious websites, the comments devolve immediately into an argument over a woman’s right to choose. I recognize that I know a lot of people, some of them reading this perhaps, who would disagree with my pro-choice position and others who would not share my philosophy that abortion should be safe, legal and rare.

But we get distracted at our peril, because no matter where you stand on abortion, Akin is spouting “Old Husband’s Tales” as fact, showing an ignorance about and disdain for women that is appalling.

Women form more than half the population. We are not children. We are equally created human beings. Unfortunately we are also sexually vulnerable.

Men are, too, of course. They can be assaulted and invaded, and it’s happened historically and it happens all the time.

But women can be willfully entered and impregnated, an act that has lifelong consequences for the woman and also for a potential child. To suggest that some sort of voodoo hormones will protect women from conception is absurd, so ridiculous that I can’t believe I’m having to write it down or think about it.

Old Husbands’ Tales are based in a belief that women are unequal to men, that they are in effect property to be used at will. What’s a “legitimate” rape? An attack by a stranger on an innocent virgin? It’s an Old Husbands’ Tale that there can be no rape in marriage, because a man has the right to do what he wants with his wife. It’s an Old Husbands’ Tale that a woman can run faster with her skirt up than a man with his pants down. (Yes, some people call that a joke.) It’s an Old Husbands’ Tale that “men have needs,” and that takes us down other roads that show a disregard for women as a class. It’s an Old Husbands’ Tale that women don’t even know if they’ve been raped.

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