NEW YORK (AP) — President Barack Obama is mocking Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri for his remarks about a woman’s body being able to avoid pregnancy during what Akin called a “legitimate rape.”

Obama tells a group of donors in New York that the Republican congressman from Missouri “somehow missed science class” even though he sits on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Obama says Akin’s remarks are representative of what Obama called “the desire to go backwards instead of forwards and fight fights that we thought were settled 20 or 30 years ago.”

Akin has refused calls from within the GOP to drop his bid to challenge Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. He made the remarks in a TV interview last Sunday while defending his opposition to abortion in all circumstances.

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