Missouri Lawmaker Apologizes for Suggesting There Is Such a Thing as 'Consensual Rape'

Republican legislator Barry Hovis is sorry mistakenly suggesting that some rape is consensual while explaining that eight weeks is plenty of time to discover pregnancy and make the decision to have an abortion.

He says he misspoke on the State House floor while lecturing on how rape works:

“Let’s just say someone goes out and they’re raped or they’re sexually assaulted one night after a college party — because most of my rapes were not the gentleman jumping out of the bushes that nobody had ever met,” Hovis said. “That was one or two times out of a hundred. Most of them were date rapes or consensual rapes, which were all terrible.”

Rep. Raychel Proudie, a Democrat, pointed out in her remarks that, “There is no such thing, no such thing as consensual rape.”

Hovis owns this particular mistake while maintaining that everything else he said in a speech aimed at restricting human beings’ right to make decisions about what goes on inside their own bodies was completely accurate: “I’m not trying to make excuses,” Hovis said, “Sometimes you make a mistake and you own up to it.”

Hovis would also like the press to know that he totally listens to women and survivors when he’s not bloviating over them in legislative sessions, calling the rape cases he worked “his rapes,” and asserting that eight weeks is “ample time” to make a decision about abortion:

“Hovis later told The Washington Post that he misspoke and said he believes there is “no such thing as consensual rape.”

He added that, in all his years in law enforcement, he took the testimony of rape victims seriously.

“When a rape is reported, and I’ll speak for myself, you always take the word of the victim,” he said.”

Yes, he seems like a great listener.

Missouri joins Georgia, Ohio, and Alabama in introducing near-total abortion bans aimed at baiting the Supreme Court into overturning Roe v. Wade. It’s also the state that gave a platform to another noted rapesplainer, Todd Akin, who famously confused human reproductive systems with those of ducks.