Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) proposed an unorthodox approach to the polarizing issue of abortion during a speech Tuesday evening in cShain Lounge.

“This country was founded on good ideas,” Akin said. “All the people who came to this country thought we had some good ideas. They said so with their feet.”

There are good ideas and bad ideas on all issues, he said, relating a speech he heard by a KGB operative many years ago. The operative had proposed to attack the U.S. not by direct confrontation, but by slow encroachment and taking over neighboring nations. Those nations, and eventually the U.S., would fall because the KGB would infect them with bad ideas.

He challenged the small audience to question what exactly those good ideas are.

Akin pointed specifically to the Declaration of Independence and its affirmation that everyone has the “inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

He said that he felt this provision indicates that there is a God, individuals have alienable rights and the government’s job is to protect those rights.

Such ideas date back to definitive characters in American history such as the Pilgrims and Thomas Jefferson, Akin said.

“If you don’t buy that your rights come from God then these goofballs in the Supreme Court will take them away,” Akin, a self-described evangelical Christian, said. Those ideas affirm what is said in the Bible, which Akin said he sees as the source of all truth.

Having outlined his own position and logic, Akin went on to point out what he sees as the weaknesses of the abortion-rights movement.

“If you talk to those people who are pro-abortion you’ll find that they are schizophrenics jumping from one argument to the next,” he said.

He said that abortion-rights advocates often bring up the question of when exactly life begins.

“From a technical point of view, from my training as an engineer, what defines a person comes from the moment that the sperm and egg unite. Everything after that is climate control – nurturing and incubating,” he said. Nevertheless, Akin said that logical debate is the only viable option for convincing others about issues such as partial-birth abortion.

“We’re going to win this thing. But we’re going to win it by persuasion, not by force,” he said.

He also said that liberals have been particularly helpful in convincing moderate voters to lean toward conservatives on this matter by adopting what he sees as illogical stances, such as their support of activist judges.

“When the judges start to act like legislators it becomes very dangerous,” he said.

The first instance of activist judges in U.S. history that he recalls was the Dred Scott case, where judges took it upon themselves to say that slaves were not citizens.

“These activist judges are the ones who gave us the Civil War,” Akin said.

Akin drew a distinction between conservatives’ support of the death penalty while simultaneously opposing abortion. Criminals who receive the death penalty forfeit their right to life, he said.

“You can’t legislate morality,” he said. “You legislate immorality.”

He added that by punishing severe crimes and outlawing abortion, governments decide what is wrong, not what is right.

Akin said that he sees American popular opinion slowly shifting toward an anti-abortion rights stance. “People know in their minds what is right,” he said. “The obstacle is their hearts.”

There was little objection from the audience.

“It’s interesting how he showed that [the anti-abortion rights stance] can be argued from a scientific point of view, from a Biblical point of view and from a common-sense point of view,” Michelina Cox (SFS ’07) said.

The speech was sponsored by Georgetown University Right to Life.