President Barack Obama again criticized Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) for his controversial remarks on rape, saying the GOP Senate nominee "somehow missed science class."
“Recently some of you have been paying attention to the commentary about the senator [sic] from Missouri, Mr. Akin," Obama said at a campaign event Wednesday evening, according to White House pool reports. "The interesting thing here is that this, this is an individual who sits on the House Committee on Science and Technology but somehow missed science class. And it’s representative of the desire to go backwards instead of forwards and fight fights that we thought were settled 20 or 30 years ago."
Akin sparked outrage when he justified his opposition to abortion by claiming that victims of "legitimate rape" rarely get pregnant in an interview with KTVI-TV on Sunday.
"From what I understand from doctors, that's really rare," said Akin said of pregnancy caused by rape. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume maybe that didn't work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist."
This isn't the first time the president has weighed in on Akin's remarks. In a surprise news conference Monday, Obama condemned Akin's comments, calling them "offensive."
"Rape is rape. And the idea that we should be parsing and qualifying and slicing what types of rape we are talking about doesn't make sense to the American people and certainly doesn't make sense to me," Obama said. "So what I think these comments do underscore is why we shouldn't have a bunch of politicians, a majority of whom are men, making health care decisions on behalf of women."
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney also labeled Akin's remarks as "offensive," joining a number of GOP lawmakers calling for Akin to drop out of the U.S. Senate race in Missouri.
Below, a slideshow of other politicians' reactions to Akin's controversial remarks:
