California Republican Celeste Greig has been ousted from her post as president of the state's Republican Assembly in the aftermath of a comment she made about rape, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
Greig was voted out by a 84-78 vote at a CRA convention, after a statement she made in March that "the percentage of pregnancies due to rape is small because it's an act of violence, because the body is traumatized" while criticizing similar remarks made by 2012 Missouri Senate candidate and former Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.). She is replaced by John Briscoe, an attorney and member of the Huntington Beach Union High School District board of trustees.
The comments made by Greig were denounced by state and national Democrats. A petition calling for Greig's resignation, sponsored by MoveOn.org and the advocacy group the Courage Campaign, was delivered to the California Republican Party headquarters in March with over 28,000 signatures.
According to the Mercury News, Briscoe's campaign manager Aaron Park described Greig's remark as "embarrassing" to the CRA, an organization that former President Ronald Reagan once described as "the conscience of the Republican Party."
Greig's defeat in the election for CRA president makes her the latest conservative to face political consequences for incendiary comments about rape. Akin, who was initially the frontrunner in the 2012 Senate election in Missouri, was defeated by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) after saying that victims of "legitimate rape" rarely get pregnant because the female body "has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
Comments such as Greig's have been repudiated by women's advocacy groups, progressive organizations and doctors alike, as studies have shown that pregnancies are conceived by rape with disturbing frequency.
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