I use to cover a lot of trials when I was a reporter. Many of those trials in the small district in northwest Tennessee were rapes, domestic violence and basically crimes against women.

One trial. the rape victim was a nine-month old child. Another time there was the rape of an older woman. Those are dramatic, I know, but let’s realize that a lot of rapes aren’t reported such as date rape. We live in a society that shames women. Women have bible verses taken out of context and thrown at them about sex, and then if we are violated then it was God’s will? I had an angry fit about 20 years ago when a young woman was asked on the stand by an attorney “What were you wearing?” followed by “Where you drinking?”

It doesn’t matter and those are the kind of questions that define rape culture.

I’ve said it before and I will keep on saying it until my teeth fall out of my mouth that rape is rape. And using rape as an abortion political talking point is sickening.

We need politicians to lead us, not ground us out burying our voices under oppression and dirt. The good thing that happens when an asshat like Todd Akin tries to use the term “legitimate rape” and wants us to swallow that line of crap is that people stand up, they stand together and they say NO! Every time that an Akin of the world says that women who are raped rarely get pregnant we can yell back that there were 32,000 pregnancies last year resulting from rape.

And, I can only hope that we can get these people out of office. I also hope that our political system will work diligently to get Akin off the Committee on Science, Space and Technology because he obviously doesn’t need to be near anything to do with basic science.

We have choices right now. One of those choices is not what it once was when I was a young activist. We fought for change, that women would be heard in courts and although it isn’t perfect, we have more than we did before than we had. Now the mission is different. We are going to have to fight not to lose our basic civil rights when it comes to our own bodies.

We need to fight with facts.

We can call Akin a hideous moron all day long but that’s not going to change the fact that he got caught. There are a lot of legislators out there who believe the same thing. We need to make sure that we have legislators out there will work on policy that moves us forward. We don’t need men like Paul Ryan and Akin redefining the definition of rape. Four members of the congressional delegation for the state of Tennessee signed on to this “redefinition” last year. Familiarize yourself with those names. Know them and also take note that one is a woman. Please also take note that one is a doctor who was once accused of domestic violence.

I wrote this post in February of 2011. I would kindly like to ask you to give it another read.

I said it then and I will say it again, rape is rape.