What, indeed?

Former Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), whose Senate campaign went down in flames after he claimed the female body could shut down a pregnancy in a case of "legitimate rape," slammed Hillary Clinton's treatment of sexual assault victims in an interview published Thursday. 

"Hillary Clinton, in fact, has made a practice of trashing women with legitimate claims to having been assaulted," Akin told the Daily Mail's David Martosko. 

The conservative Washington Free Beacon recently published audio recordings in which Clinton discussed a 1975 child rape case where she represented the defendant. Clinton's comments on the recordings suggest that she thought her client was guilty even after he passed a polygraph test. The Daily Beast later spoke with the victim, who said Clinton "took me through hell" and"lied like a dog." 

"It is incredibly hypocritical that Hillary Clinton would carry on about an imagined 'Republican war on women' when she once got a child rapist off the hook who she knew to be guilty, and laughed about how she did it when interviewed," Akin told the Daily Mail. "In the process, she de-legitimized the legitimate claims of the 12-year-old victim and then slandered the victim to justify her tactics." 

Akin also suggested Clinton hired private investigators to "silence those women" who accused her husband, former President Bill Clinton, of sexual harassment. 

The former congressman broke over a year of media silence to promote his upcoming book, "Firing Back," which lays out a defense of his infamous "legitimate rape" remark." 

My comment about a woman's body shutting the pregnancy down, was directed to the impact of stress on fertilization," Akin writes, as quoted by the Daily Mail. "This is something fertility doctors debate and discuss. Doubt me? Google 'stress and fertilization,' and you will find a library of research on the subject." 

"The research is not conclusive, but there is considerable evidence that stress makes conception more difficult," he continues. "And what could be more stressful than a rape?"