Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri, wants to ban the morning-after pill, considering it to be a form of abortion, he told a Kansas City radio station Wednesday.
“As far as I’m concerned, the morning-after pill is a form of abortion, and I think we just shouldn’t have abortion in this country,” Akin said Wednesday, the day after his victory in the Republican primary, in an interview with Kansas City radio host Greg Knapp. Audio was posted by the liberal site Progress Missouri.
Knapp asked about Akin’s views on abortion in situations as rape and incest, or where the life of the mother is at risk.
“Well, you know, the life of the mother, the situation there is one where I think what you want to do is optimize life. You try to save the mother’s life, you try to save the child,” said Akin. “There are certain things, like you know you get a tubal pregnancy — where the child has absolutely no chance of surviving — and then you do the best you can to save the mother’s life. So, I think you optimize life, is the way I would probably describe it.”
Knapp asked again: “So just to be clear, though, you would like to ban the morning-after, totally for everyone?”
“Yeah,” Akin said. “I think that’s a form of abortion, and I don’t support it.”
Akin’s view, shared by many social conservatives, is that the morning-after pill amounts to abortion. But that view conflates the morning-after pill, which scientists say prevents a pregnancy from happening in the first place, with the so-called “abortion pill,” or mifepristone, which ends a pregnancy of up to seven weeks.
The PollTracker Average currently shows Akin ahead of Sen. Claire McCaskill, 47.7 percent to 44 percent, based on surveys conducted before Akin won the GOP nomination.
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