Now, do I think Pete doesn’t look too bright only because I know he isn’t too bright? I think so…
There are two reasons to deride Rep. Nielsen. First, by his own words he is marked as an idiot unworthy not only off high office but of public trust, and second, he either has been paying no attention to epic, infamous, well-publicized catastrophes in his own party, or doesn’t have a brain pan of sufficient depth to comprehend them.
Surely you remember Todd Akin, the Missouri GOP Senate candidate in 2012, who blew his party’s chances of taking a eminently winnable seat from the horrible Claire McCaskill by uttering this nonsense on the issue of whether rape-caused pregnancies should be an exception to abortion restrictions:
“It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down…”
He was ridiculed, he was attacked, he was mocked, and from all parties and ideologies, for his magical theory that a woman’s body knows the difference between “legitimate rape” and the nice kind of sexual intercourse. (Oddly, none of those “doctors” ever came forward, perhaps because they were wearing diapers and had turnips sticking out of their ears. Somehow, Pete Nielsen missed all of that, and so during a debate in the Idaho Legislature on bill that would require women seeking abortions to be given a list of providers of free ultrasounds, when it was noted that the measure makes no exception for victims of rape or incest, he piped up with this:
“Now, I’m of the understanding that in many cases of rape it does not involve any pregnancy because of the trauma of the incident. That may be true with incest a little bit.”
Now, if he had been immediately pelted with wadded up papers, soda cans and other things by his horrified colleagues, may be would have had the sense to stop digging, but, being an idiot, he didn’t. Asked how he knew this absolute non-medical non-fact as reliable as the theory that you can catch AIDS from a toilet seat, Nielsen said, “That’s information that I’ve had through the years. Whether it’s totally accurate or not, I don’t know. “I read a lot of information. I have read it several times. … Being a father of five girls, I’ve explored this a lot.”
Wait, what? Never mind, I don’t want to think about that last part.
I’m not sure that this myth was devised in order to blame the victims of rape and use their subsequent pregnancy as proof that it was really consensual, but I am sure that this is an affirmative harm that results from ignorance like Nielsen’s. The fact that anyone believes such self-evident nonsense in the 21st Century is depressing; the fact that someone so stupid was actually elected as a state representative is a catalyst to despair.
***
An aside: I found out about Nielsen in a Facebook post by a longtime friend who I respect tremendously in his field. His friends tend to be hard progressive, and the post was instantly followed by comments about how this was typical of Republicans, how nobody should be surprised when a Republican shows his or ignorance, how this is what you get when you vote for racists. I didn’t know any of the commenters, but as I did years ago on a progressive listserv when a woman posted about how George W. Bush was a drunk and a fool “like all Baptists,” I pointed out to these hypocrites that taking one individual member of any group and using him to tar everyone in that group as if they must possess the same perceived flaws was blatant bigotry. It is no less hateful and unfair to attribute Nielsen’s ignorance to all men, whites, straight men, married men, fathers, Idahoans, or Republicans, and yet these same people who would petition to have anyone tarred and feathered if they said that a terrorist was a “typical Muslim” are smug and enthusiastic about wielding the weapon of bigotry against those who disagree with them.
I am henceforth calling out all who do this, whether their target is a group whose member I tend to disapprove of or not, on Facebook and anywhere else.
Ethics Alarms 
It’s only bigotry when it’s those you don’t agree with doing it. When those you do agree with do it it’s just expressing a concise truth.
As a father of five daughters in a small town encompassing a 4,000-manned military base, Rep. Rice needs to get all his physiological ducks in a row before he shoots his mouth off any further.
I see what you did there. Those military bases…those troops…they’ll knock-up your daughters in the blink of an eye, and they won’t wait for consent.
I only wish I could say of what you have said here, that this is typical of ethicists, and this is what you get when you read essays by ethicists.
“I’m not sure that this myth was devised in order to blame the victims of rape and use their subsequent pregnancy as proof that it was really consensual,….”
I don’t think it was. I believe, and I could be wrong, that this belief came about to counter pro-abortion activists who emphasize rape and incest victims being forced to carry babies conceived via traumatic events as a cruel consequence of restricting or banning abortion. The idea that conception as a result of rape/incest is rare seems to appeal to anti-abortion proponents who believe that irresponsible sexual behavior and a desire to avoid raising a child conceived by such are the cause of most abortions.
For this reason, since many anti-abortion activists are religious and somewhat suspicious of what is deemed irrefutable scientific fact, they are quick to jump on any source that suggests that conception as a result of rape/incest is extraordinarily rare and/or impossible and that SCIENCE proves that women’s bodies don’t operate that way. The alternative, that victimized women and girls are forced to continue to suffer, makes the anti-abortion argument less neat and tidy than they’d like it to be. Of course, if an unborn baby is a human being and abortion constitutes killing a human, then the circumstances of conception are somewhat moot. Your recent, excellent posts explaining the foundations of the anti-abortion arguments show us how both sides take potshots at side issues rather than the fundamental question of life it involves.
Now, women’s bodies don’t work the way Akin or Nielsen think they do, but, since the war about abortion is, in part, a war about science (Is an unborn baby a human being? Is it protoplasm? Is conception the result of raw nature or is it guided by Intelligence?), you will find both sides clinging to whatever arguments they can find that they feel prove their theses.
Just my opinion, anyway.
+1 Insightful
“a war about science (Is an unborn baby a human being? Is it protoplasm? Is conception the result of raw nature or is it guided by Intelligence?)”
That is distinctly NOT a war about science. It’s a war about philosophy.
Anyone denying the science that an unborn human baby is a human is colossally Stupid (yes, with a capital S) or outright Dishonest. The argument is whether or not obligation to protect innocent life (especially innocent life that had no say its own coming-about) has a cut off point somewhere.
That’s philosophy. Not science.
You’re assuming what is to be proved, begging the question.
A baby is a human being, whether it has been through the process of birth or not. The question though is when does a baby come into existence? That, I feel is primarily a scientific, not a religious question.
I don’t care what you feel. An unborn human baby is 100% human.
You’re being:
1) colossally stupid
2) willfully dishonest
Hanlon’s razor isn’t too merciful on this topic.
“A baby is a human being, whether it has been through the process of birth or not. The question though is when does a baby come into existence?”
I’m sorry I really can’t help but ask if anyone else laughed at the 2nd question.
Does this pro-abortionist actually believe that unborn humans possibly don’t exist whilst in their unborn state?
Note, her 1st sentence, cleary agrees with my assertion that unborn human babies are human, then she poses the question whether or not they actually exist.
Phenomenal.
This is why I can’t take pro-abortionists seriously.
In retrospect, I need to amend my initial fantastic response. You’re first sentence comes at me as though my assertion was an error, then your 2nd sentence upon rereading actually agrees with me. So there is some serious confusion on your part there. I’m not sure sentence 1 in context can be juxtaposed with sentence 2 in any unified or coherent way.
The third sentence I still assert is blatant nonsense. As I explained in my 2nd separate comment in this subthread.
The last, is of course where we disagree along the lines leading to my Hanlon’s razor dichotomy. The existence of an unborn baby is proven by simple observation (aka science). Denying that is completely stupid or dishonest. To reiterate, as I posited above, the real abortion debate question is whether or not innocent human life brought into existence by others deserves protection or not.
That isn’t a scientific question, but a philosophical one. Science doesn’t discover rights. Philosophy looks for them (doesn’t create them mind you… It looks for them) while ethics proves whether or not what has been discovered is actually a right or just fancy.
This guy looks like one of the guys from Hee Haw. I can’t remember his name though.
Junior Samples?
No — the host. I’ll look him up later.
Do you mean Buck Owens or Roy Clark?
Don’t hate me for knowing those names…
Roy Clark — that’s the one! Their eyes are very similar.
Why would you be embarrassed to know that?
Why give this crackpot any attention? He is not even in Congress, unlike Jared Polis.
Because he’s an ELECTED crackpot…
To rationalize: at least he isn’t as important as the two leading crackpots of the Democrat party right now…
One is a serial liar and the other actually thinks socialism works…
Speaking of:
“His friends tend to be hard progressive, and the post was instantly followed by comments about how this was typical of Republicans, how nobody should be surprised when a Republican shows his or ignorance”
This is why intelligence isn’t determined democratically. The fact that no one derides obviously failed systems like Socialism as a true paragon of ignorance is because a dangerous majority of Left-wing academics actually consider it a good system. Yet every time a Bernist pops off, they are showing their ignorance.
Socialism is great ON PAPER. If stupid humans didn’t get involved… You give into the system what you can, as does everyone? And what you need, and just what you need, is given back to you as needed? GRAND! But humans, damn them, start wanting stuff they don’t need…
Then there’s always the math problem…
Then again, everything sounds good on paper when described by its adherents, right?