The problem with the word choice is not just political. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but words mean things. One is not just as good as any other and one's choice among the available words tells the listener something about the thoughts happening inside your head. That is what communication is for. An honest slip of the tongue I'm willing to overlook, but I don't think that's what happened here. I think Akin accidentally told us the truth of what he believes.
He may have engaged in a Freudian slip, and have been trying to advance some kind of anti-abortion agenda, with flawed logic and bad science.
But when someone uses an adjective like "legitimate" before a word like "rape", it makes me wonder what the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate rapes is, and the context in which it matters. I can see some getting upset because of the presumption of a context suggesting decriminalization of some currently criminal activity, but I would not jump to that conclusion absent further reseach into the author's motives.
By not letting inflamatory language affect my gut response, I can concentrate on the supposed science at hand, which currently appears to be bogus. There may be contexts in which it is valid (women killed after being raped surely would not carry a fetus to term, and one can work backwards from that), and it might be interesting to see if there is a narrow set of circumstances in which the hypothesis is correct, but I would expect it to be for such extreme cases, that it would be irrelevant as pertaining to large populations.
Why do we have to use your preconceptions as the baseline for the development of our criminal law? I think that your "mental image" is precisely the problem exactly because it defines out of existence all but the most heinous (and, I might add, rare) offenses. Why do that if what we're actually trying to punish is making a woman have sex with you without your consent, and not just battery?
No, it doesn't. You only think it does. It's exactly the reverse of the present argument. Just because something is less depraved does not make it less unacceptable. But by making the definition of a word so all-encompassing, it dilutes its impact in referring to the most vile circumstances. Case in point: so-called "sex-offender" registries are practically meaningless because they lump in the pedo who raped eight year old Sally with the drunk college kid who mooned people out a bus window.
See, I was raised to think that forcing or tricking someone do do my bidding is wrong. And, that encompasses all the "lesser evil" forms of rape that you think I seek to undefine.
I'd really prefer the notion of the crime of "sexual assault" with varying degrees thereof, with "rape" being the most serious.
The present situation leads to absurdities where a husband can find himself lumped in with the most violent criminals because his wife got pissy at him for not mowing the lawn the day after they had consensual sex after coming home from dinner at a restaurant where she had two or three glasses of wine. And yes, there is a misandrist political agenda to go after such "low-hanging fruit" under the label of "rape" (implying violence and helplessness), because it fuels the meme that men are inherently violent as evidenced by inflated numbers of "violent crime" arrests.
In WA, a man is guilty of "domestic violence", if among other things, he acts in a way that makes his wife afraid of him. Guess what? Disclosing that he discovered her adultery qualifies as "acting in such a way", because a "reasonable" woman would fear his reaction.
His choice is to stay in the home, and put up with the betrayal; stay in the home and disclose the discovery (which can lead to his immediate arrest and likely conviction even as he may be more hurt than threating); or leave, disclose the discovery, and likely file for divorce. If he does the last of the three, it will be presumed that he has abandoned his children.
I know this from personal experience in my divorce of 2007. I also have regained primary residential and sole legal of my kids after having lost same due to my "defacto" abandonment of them in my attempt to stave off arrest so that I might continue to be employed and support them.
All gender-feminist agendas have done is lead to legislation that empowers women to not be equals and enjoy equal protection under the law, but rather swing the pendulum so that they may freely emulate, and be rewarded for emulating, the worst of men.