Much fun has been made of US Senate candidate Todd Akin for charging that abortions are performed on women who are not pregnant.
I joked on Twitter that perhaps Akin was commenting on the way fee-for-service medicine incentivizes doctors to perform unnecessary procedures.
Yet it turns out that claims about fictitious abortions are a "thing" in certain corners of the pro-life movement, e.g. here.
The point being, I suppose, to present abortion not as a tragic consequence of life choices gone wrong, but instead as an act of exploitation imposed upon misguided women by a rapacious "abortion industry." If you think about abortion that way, it's easier to justify banning it altogether. The only problem is, thinking about it that way is an utter delusion. But we may yet have six full years to get used to Todd Akin's delusions, and those of the faction that installed him as a Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.
