You may remember former Congressman Todd Akin’s 2012 comment, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” He was explaining SCIENCE: Women who were ACTUALLY raped (i.e., not FALLEN women or LYING women) would not need abortions because they would not get pregnant. SCIENCE.

The day after he made the comments, Akin, whose lustrous combover gleamed like a million gold doubloons minted by a magical industrialist-funded super PAC, apologized, saying,

I’ve really made a couple of serious mistakes here that were just wrong, and I need to apologize for those. Let me be clear: Rape is never legitimate. It’s an evil act that’s committed by violent predators. I used the wrong words in the wrong way. What I said was ill conceived, and it was wrong, and for that I apologize. I don’t know that I’m the only person in public office who’s suffered from foot-in-mouth disease here, and this was a very, very serious error.

He lost his Senate race, to Democrat Claire McCaskill, anyway.

Now Akin has a book out. And suddenly he is un-apologizing. It is sort of like the opposite of Equinox’s #preapology [sic] that we discussed on Tuesday. Instead of apologizing in advance for acting like a dick, post-unapologizing (we’re trademarking this, so don’t even think about it, Equinox) is retracting an apology you’ve already made for acting like a dick and thereby acting like MORE of a dick.

According to Politico, Akin now says,

By asking the public at large for forgiveness, I was validating the willful misinterpretation of what I had said. My comment about a woman’s body shutting the pregnancy down was directed to the impact of stress on fertilization. This is something fertility doctors debate and discuss. Doubt me? Google “stress and infertility,” and you will find a library of research on the subject.

In the book, Akin goes into far more detail, explaining SCIENCE, dismantling his own apology and blaming “liberal, left leaning blogs” for the way his remarks were perceived.

It’s funny, because I was under a huge amount of stress when I conceived my daughter Josie. I was so unhappy in my job I was crying at my desk. (I actually found out I was pregnant on my last day of work, after I finally gave notice.) I have no idea how that zygote implanted in me. It is COUNTER TO SCIENCE. Akin Science.™ Then when I got pregnant with Maxine, my dad was dying. My mom was in emotional hell. And Josie’s beloved sitter was injured and a lot of other terrible, stressful stuff happened. It’s ontologically fascinating that this child DOES NOT EXIST, even as I pay an exorbitant sum for her to go to Jewish camp.

Todd, we do not accept your post-apology. I now invoke Sports Night (aka the most underrated show in the history of television except for Firefly), made by Aaron Sorkin before he became too self-righteous and annoying and self-cannibalizing to live. Rent it. In the show, adorable associate producer Jeremy (played by current-day Scandal staffer and Shabbos-loving Twitter ace Josh Molina) breaks up with adorable senior associate producer Natalie (played by Sabrina Lloyd), but she simply refuses to accept the breakup. “I don’t acknowledge it,” she tells him serenely. There is patented Sorkinian walking and talking, during which Jeremy protests:

JEREMY

Natalie, this is unilateral.  I don’t
need you to sign off on this in order
for it to be valid.

NATALIE

Sweetie, if it makes you feel better
to break up with me, that’s fine.  But
I don’t break up with you.

JEREMY

It doesn’t work like that.

NATALIE

It’s working like that right now.

In the next episode, Jeremy (who we all know is making a mistake in breaking up with Natalie) is STILL trying to break up with Natalie, who calmly announces via headset during a commercial break:

NATALIE

(INTO MIC) Everybody, this is your
nightly two-minute confirmation that
I’m still Jeremy’s girlfriend.

JEREMY

No you’re not.

NATALIE

I am.

JEREMY

(INTO MIC) She’s not.

NATALIE

Oh yes.

JEREMY

I’ve broken up with you.  I’ve broken
up with you and I break up with you
again.  Right there.  Right then is
when I did it.  We just broke up.

NATALIE

Look, whoosh, I undid it.

This is how we at SorryWatch treat Akin’s post-unapology. We do not acknowledge it. We do not accept it. It did not happen, no backsies, cheese touch. The tide may have turned so that women are even less people than they were two years ago, even more viewed as mere ovarian repositories for far more valuable cellular matter than they themselves are, but WE DO NOT ACCEPT THE POST-UNAPOLOGY. We women have so little power now; the power to not accept a post-unapology is one we willingly embrace.