Rep. Steve King Is Really and Truly Trying to Argue That Rape & Incest Are Good for Humanity

Iowa Congressman Steve King has said some truly horrific things over the years. He’s a vocal white supremacist as well as homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic. He also frequently uses the sort of rhetoric that ties his anti-abortion beliefs into a narrative of white supremacy. Back in 2011, he said that abortion (with the implication being among white people) is “not constructive to our culture and our civilization. If we let our birthrate get down below the replacement rate, we’re a dying civilization.” In 2017 he said, “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies” in regard to immigration.

And now he’s out here legitimately trying to argue not just that abortion should be prohibited even in cases of rape and incest (although he did also do that, saying “it’s not the baby’s fault,” as if abortion were a punishment), but that rape and incest are actually good because they give the world more babies.

King told the Westside Conservative Club Wednesday that we should basically all be giving thanks for the existence of rape. “What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled out anyone who was a product of rape or incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that?” he said, according to the Des Moines Register.

Yes, that is a congressman implying that the only reason the human species has survived–the only reason why we have a “population” at all–is because of rape and incest, and then, given the context, he seems to be using that logic to imply that modern–not just historical–rape is also not something we can complain about.

First of all, yes we would. We would be fine. But King appears to be projecting a personal investment onto the defense of rape because who knows–one of his ancestors might have been the product of rape or incest, so without it, he might not be here. “Considering all the wars and all the rapes and pillages that happened throughout all these different nations, I know that I can’t say that I was not a part of a product of that,” he said.

Basically, King is describing the possibility of a world in which we don’t have rape, incest, or Steve King. Kindly point me in the direction of that utopia, please.

(via Des Moines Register, image: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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