Carcano decided to tell her story publicly for the first time after reading here about the Peace Corps Equity Act, introduced by Sen. Frank Lautenberg last week, which would modify the current policy by extending Peace Corps health coverage to abortions in case of rape. Carcano, who is now working as a research assistant on HIV/AIDS, says she wasn't particularly educated about the politics of abortion. But then, in the months after her ordeal, the headlines were full of politicians talking about abortion, "legitimate rape" and doubting rape victims could even become pregnant. "I came back to my country and I felt like other Americans were against me or against my choices," she says.

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Imagine he wanted – and legally had the right to be – that child's father. It's a very real scenario, all across America. But in one state, that may soon be changing.

As a riveting CNN story last summer, at the height of "legitimate rape" fever, illuminated, a stunning majority of states – 31 of them – offer some form of visitation and custody rights for men who impregnate their rape victims. And it's not just the threat of having to co-parent with one's assailant that's a nightmare for many victims -- it's the ugly opportunism it inspires. As attorney Shauna Prewitt, whose daughter was the product of a sexual assault, wrote back then, "When no law prohibits a rapist from exercising these rights, a woman may feel forced to bargain away her legal rights to a criminal trial in exchange for the rapist dropping the bid to have access to her child." A baby can become a bargaining chip.

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"Of course you regret it," he said in the interview. "You think, what it would have been like if I hadn't done that."

Akin also took the opportunity to make a dig at Karl Rove, whose Super PAC American Crossroads launched a new project to make sure that another candidate like Akin doesn't win the Republican primary, only to prove unelectable in the general election. "Karl Rove has made himself an expert," Akin said. "I think I lost one race. He managed to lose about 12 of them in one night."

Watch:

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"Granted, the percentage of pregnancies due to rape is small because it's an act of violence, because the body is traumatized. I don't know what percentage of pregnancies are due to the violence of rape. Because of the trauma the body goes through," she told the newspaper before arriving at the state GOP's spring convention in Sacramento.

Ironically, she got on the subject while criticizing Rep. Todd Akin, the former Missouri Senate candidate who infamously said women's bodies have a way of shutting down pregnancies in the case of "legitimate rape." "That was an insensitive remark," Greig said. "I'm sure he regretted it. He should have come back and apologized." Greig, however, went on to essentially reaffirm part of Akin's logic.

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Akin was responding to the Conservative Victory Project, an effort by Crossroads to fund mainstream Republicans in primary races to ensure that unelectable conservatives, like Akin, don't make it to the general election.

Akin added that the Conservative Victory Project is a "misleading" name, and the group “is trying to get rid of conservatives, which is very thinly disguised."

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Last week, Gingrey offered a partial defense of Todd Akin's comments about "legitimate rape"and women's bodies being able to shut down pregnancies, telling the Marietta Daily Journal that Akin was "partly right" on that score:

"I’ve delivered lots of babies, and I know about these things. It is true. We tell infertile couples all the time that are having trouble conceiving because of the woman not ovulating, ‘Just relax. Drink a glass of wine. And don’t be so tense and uptight because all that adrenaline can cause you not to ovulate.’ So he was partially right wasn’t he?"

Gingrey is currently the Chair of the GOP Doctors Caucus, has been Ranking Member of the Science Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation, and, like Akin, previously served on the House Science Committee. 

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Hey, speaking of putting up a fight, how about that Superior Court Judge Derek G. Johnson? What a card! Back in 2008, the Orange County judge was handing down a sentence on Metin Gurel, who'd been convicted of "rape, forcible oral copulation, domestic battery, stalking and making threats against his former live-in girlfriend." Prosecutors, who'd asked for a 16-year term for the man, noted that on the day of the assault, he'd also threatened to mutilate the victim's genitals with a heated screwdriver. And what did Derek G. Johnson think of what Gurel had done? Not a whole heck of a lot.

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"And," Hughes continues, "if another Republican man says anything about rape other than it is a horrific, violent crime, I want to personally cut out his tongue. The college-age daughters of many of my friends voted for Obama because they were completely turned off by Neanderthal comments like the suggestion of 'legitimate rape.'"

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First, there's Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin. You remember Akin, the guy who really got the right-wingers-saying-insane-things-about-rape ball rolling back in August. That's when he explained his stance on rape exceptions for abortion by authoratively declaring, "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." Akin, who is now trailing his opponent Claire McCaskill – though not by as much as one might expect for a hulking ignoramus – has now unleashed a new ad featuring voters like Kelly, a single mother who says she's both had an abortion and "been raped in my past." Kelly goes on to say she's voting for Akin because he "defends the unborn."

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Right Wing Watch flags that in 1992, Akin opposed the bill, which would have established a "'statewide child abuse review board' and tighten[ed] the standard for proving child abuse from 'reason to suspect' to 'credible evidence.'"

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported at the time:

"Akin said he was concerned that ‘the department could come into your home and if your kid had just fallen off his bike and skinned his knee…take your kid away.’ Akin also said that with a loose definition of abuse, neighbors might use child-abuse reports ‘as a tool to harass, a way to get even with’ someone they dislike."

The editorial board of the Post-Dispatch slammed Akin's opposition to the bill, saying that he "resorts to extreme and unlikely examples to bolster his case."

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I know what you’re thinking: Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock (pictured with Mitt Romney above) and their unfortunate habit of making comments about rape that drive voters away. No doubt, that’s a part of what’s happened to the Republicans in this cycle.

But as much as Republicans have a real nominations problem, one which probably will cost them more than just those two seats in this cycle, I see no sign at all that the party is going to learn any useful lessons from it. The problem is that the scope of the likely defeat is so broad that everyone is going to be able to find convenient targets for blame.

Remember, this was going to be an election cycle that set up very nicely for Republicans. Because we’re six years out from the 2006 Democratic landslide, the Democrats had to defend 23 seats while only 10 Republicans were up for re-election. Impending Democratic retirements in Nebraska and North Dakota made it seem that getting the three seats needed to reach 50 would be automatic, with the only question being whether Republicans could get close enough that 60 seats after 2014 would be well within reach.

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Todd Akin claims that women can't really get pregnant from a legitimate rape because the body secretes hormones. Now I can't even finish this sentence without getting dumber; it's making me dumber when I say it—but it's something about the body not being able to get pregnant when it's under physical stress. Mr. Akin, I think you are confusing the phrase 'legitimate rape' with the phrase 'competitive gymnastics.'"

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The latest entrant into the Republican rape insensitivity bake-off is Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who said tonight that "even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen." He, of course, joins fellow Senate candidate Todd Akin, with his now-canonical "legitimate rape" comment, and Rep. Joe Walsh, running for election in Illinois, who claimed there was no reason a woman would ever need an abortion to save her life or preserve her health. The trailblazer was Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle, who failed to unseat Harry Reid in Nevada two years ago, and famously said that if a hypothetical teenager was raped and impregnated by her father, it was an opportunity to turn "a lemon situation into lemonade."

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“She goes to Washington, D.C., it’s a little bit like one of those dogs, ‘fetch,’” he said. “She goes to Washington, D.C., and get all of these taxes and red tape and bureaucracy and executive orders and agencies and she brings all of this stuff and dumps it on us in Missouri.”

Rick Tyler, a spokesman for Akin, downplayed the remarks, telling the New York Times that Akin “made an analogy — probably could have made a better one. Everybody’s going to find a reason to get their feelings hurt and get bent out of shape.”

He also joked that Akin “could have said liberals — people actually like dogs.”

Here's the audio of Akin's remarks, via PoliticMo:

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Back in December, the Wisconsin state representative had a few thoughts about a controversial high school sexual assault case and the questions about whether the 14-year-old girl at the center of it had in fact consented to sex. At the time, he dryly observed to the Chetek Alert that "If it's rape, it's rape. If it's not, it's not," adding that his father long ago warned him: "Some girls rape easy." Because apparently the Rivard men are as enlightened about sexual assault as they are about grammar.

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Barbour said he can't pick Akin “out of a line-up with the Spice Girls,” but “I just don’t want us having Harry Reid’s favorite Republican running against Claire McCaskill.”

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The campaign launched a "Women for Akin" vertical on its website on Tuesday, with the tagline “We think for ourselves.” It then promptly pulled it after it was revealed that one of the women pictured as a "woman for Akin" was actually a Democratic operative.

The picture had the headline “I'm a women[sic], and I support Todd,” but the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the woman to Akin's left was Corinne Matti, a tracker for the Missouri Democratic Party.

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A National Journal profile quotes Lulli Akin making the comparison between Republicans trying to get Akin out of the Senate race, and the "tyranny, a top-down approach" of pre-Revolutionary America.

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(Warning: This video contains personal violence and may not be suitable for all viewers).

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