Even in our epoch of instant cancel culture, the 2012 verbal self-immolation of Missouri Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin, by way of one brief, ill-advised phrase, still resonates for its swift, brutal, and decisive outcome. A close race against the one-term Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill was lost by 15 points on Election Day. And when Akin died of cancer last week in St. Louis, at 74, his maladroit answer to an NPR reporter’s question about abortion led all the obituaries.

A longtime board member of Missouri Right to Life, and stalwart pro-life member of the Missouri Legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives, Akin explained to his interviewer that abortion should not be necessary for victims of rape because “if it’s legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down,” at which point all hell broke loose. Prominent Republicans, including Missouri’s Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, urged Akin (who had narrowly won a contentious primary) to withdraw from the race while the GOP presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, declared that Akin’s comments about “legitimate rape” were “deeply offensive, and I can’t defend what he said.”