Todd, Todd, Todd.  What a week you’ve given us.  I don’t know what’s got my mind reeling more – that a major party candidate for the Senate has a first-grader’s understanding of the female reproductive system or that he’s not alone.

By now everyone on the planet has heard or heard about Rep. Todd Akin’s amazingly ignorant comments on Sunday about rape and abortion.  They tore through the media and the blogosphere faster than Michael Phelps in a pool of piranha.

Good thing, too.  This was the most enlightening 30 seconds of video I can remember seeing.  Not only did it shine a light on the gleeful obliviousness enjoyed by a certain segment of American conservatives, it also gave an almost comical look at how uncomfortable they are with lady parts even as they obsess about them.

Akin is a 65-year-old, educated man who has a wife and two daughters – and is on the House Science and Technology Committee!  One would think that he’d be able to express himself on something of an adult level.  Instead, his explanation of his natural spermicide theory is that during a “legitimate” rape “the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down.”  You can almost feel him shake at having to verbalize anything to do with things “down there.”  Still, he wants to go there repeatedly in a legislative sense.

And, as I said, Akin isn’t alone.  Take State Rep. Steven Friend of Delaware, who explained the same idea saying that the trauma of rape causes a woman to “secrete a certain secretion” that tends to kill sperm.  Now if I were backing or penning policy based on the belief that a woman can spontaneously kill sperm introduced into her body, I would make sure I was able to explain that theory in more specific and – dare I say? – more scientific terms than these.  How about knowing the name of the “certain secretion” for starters?  Likewise, if I had co-sponsored a bill in Congress (along with VP nominee Paul Ryan) limiting abortion exceptions to “forcible” rape, I’d make a point of knowing exactly how a woman’s body can “shut that whole thing down” – particularly if I claimed to have consulted doctors on the subject.

To be honest, though I completely disagree with it, there is a logical argument to be made for Akin’s absolutist views.  If you truly believe that life begins at conception, it makes complete sense that you can’t support abortion in any way.  But if you take that stand, you have to be willing to look women in the eye and tell them that by having sex under any circumstances – consensual or otherwise – you believe they cannot be trusted to make informed decisions about their bodies.  And you have to do so without using junk science to disguise the cruelty of your actions.

I don’t think you’ll get very far, but I’ll be happy to watch you try.