Seemed to me that Akin raised a question of interest to evolutionary biologists. Assuming that a woman is a good judge of who will be a desirable father and engages in consensual relations with such people, then a mechanism that would prevent conception in cases of forcible rape would seem to serve a useful purpose by preventing conception when the woman is violated by an undesirable. There is no research I have seen that would even begin to pass muster at evaluating that hypothesis.

I agree, Cath. I don't understand the point of this article. Anesi is trying to excuse Akin's comments by saying he was actually "nuanced and thoughtful" and then by citing medieval law. Are you kidding me? Please don't tell me this is journalism.

Mimi, I would argue that my post here has far more to do with journalism than a pile of news articles that express outrage without informing anyone about anything. In fact, this post provided far more useful information than you will get from other sources, especially if you follow the link and read the Wikipedia article. The purposes of journalism are to inform and divert. This post does both.

While Akin's use of the word "legitimate" in reference to rape was pretty idiotic, his thought was not. The legal definition of "rape" varies widely by jurisdiction and has wandered far from the common law definition, so that we now have consensual relations between an 18-year-old and a 17-year-old defined as "rape" in many places. (No, I'm not obssessed with this topic, I just was forced to study it in law school.) Such legal definitions or may not make be wise, but they are clearly distinguishable from common law and what most people think of as "rape", and it is thus entirely appropriate to distinguish such cases, which is what Akin did.

Further, it is, as I have said in other comments, whether forcible rape is less likely, ceteris paribus, to result in pregnancy than consensual sex is an interesting question for an evolutionary biologist to consider. There are no good studies on this, and just having a medico say he can't think of any mechanism for this does not answer the question.

Looking at what Akin actually said (see Wikipedia link in the blog post) it is pretty clear he was attempting to distinguish forcible rape from the various non-forcible varieties of rape that have been defined by statute in the several states. But he was extraordinarily clumsy about it. Personally I found the idea that pregnancy may be less likely in cases of forcible rape than in consensual intercourse to be an interesting hypothesis that could be tested with a good statistical analysis, as oppossed to being dismissed as a "politically incorrect" question, as Chariman Mao would have put it.

Anyway, I agree with you that abortion is an unfortunate thing -- just try explaining it to a 12-year-old and see what he or she thinks of it -- but our national experience with criminalizing it was pretty bad, and I can't say I would want to return to that.

Pamela, whether a senate candidate thinks that abortion is appropriate in cases where pregnancy results from rape should be about number 500 on the list of things people care about, especially when we have unprecendented deficits, lousy GDP growth, worsening structural unemployment, and unsustainable health care spending, to mention a few issues people really should care about. Roe v. Wade is still the law of the land; what a political candidate thinks of it is pretty irrelevant.

That said, as I note in a comment above, Akin raised an interesting question -- is the probability of conception after forcible rape truly lower than the probability of conception in other cases, ceteris paribus (and there are a lot of variables to control for)? Good question and no real studies to answer it. Having an MD say there is "no known mechanism" for that does not answer the question, either. Might as well say, "I dunno".

Chuck's just practicing classic far right-wing misdirection. "Vote for us and we'll fix the economy. We'll be way too busy to legislate social issues." (wink, wink) But low and behold, as the last election cycle so vividly demonstrated, as soon as they get into office the "social issues" become a major legislative focus. Why don't you go ask women in Mississippi, Louisiana, North Dakota and other states with republican controlled legislatures whether or not "Roe V Wade" is effectively protecting access to abortions in their states. By the way, the GOP is adding a constitutional amendment that would effectively ban abortion in the U.S. to their party platform. (http://theweek.com/article/index/232284/the-gops-plan-to-outlaw-all-abortions-does-the-party-agree-with-todd-akin) So much for worrying about bigger issues.

Chuck, mabe this article on the mass rapes of Tutsi women by Hutu men during the Rwandan genocides will satisfy your interest in scientific study of pregnancy resulting from forcible rape. It doesn't mention rivers of babies, but does mention infanticide of babies born of the rapes, as well as the shame of women to whom the children were born. Hopefully the link works for you. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/the-living-proof-of-rwandas-mass-rapes-1364783.html

Most of the people I know who use the same dog-whistle "small government conservative" words you are using here are anti-library, anti-teacher, and anti-working wage for the average person. If you all get in charge we are doomed anyway.

The next president will likely name two Supreme Court justices, making the overturning of Roe vs. Wade very possible indeed. Having people who believe that our government should force women who were raped, sexually abused and could die to have babies have the power to choose the justices is horrifying. Why do we want to be a backward, dark ages country?

Pam, Akins did not mean the morning after pill caused raped women not to conceive, but that their bodies prevented pregnancy. As Chuck encourages , read thee actual statement by Akins, at the link Chuck included in his post. The morning after pill wasn't mentioned or even hinted at. He said women's bodies shut down the whole thing down and prevent pregnancy. You can't give Akin any credit, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Todd_Akin_rape_and_pregnancy_controversy

You are so right, Sharon. At the heart of it, though, is how to control women and their sexuality? If you can control how, when and under what circumstances they give birth, then you are able to control a lot, even if you cannot completely control how they become pregnant. We could make sex outside of marriage illegal, and either stone or jail those who do it, rape victims or not. A lot of societies still engage in such things. Of course, this idea is just as ridiculous as the suggestion that a rape victim's body "shuts that whole thing down." Akin is only sorry he may have offended some of his constituents. He truly believes what he said and that is truly frightening.

The "interesting question" regarding rape and pregnancy rates has been studied, rather extensively in fact if you consider the difficulties with designing controlled studies around this problem, and they do not support Mr. Akin's or 13th Century English lawmaker's opinions. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/23/legitimate-rape-todd-akin-remarks_n_1823218.html http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2012/08/19/your-chance-of-getting-pregnant-if-raped/ http://scienceblogs.com/webeasties/2012/08/21/maybe-he-was-talking-about-ducks/

I believe journalistic duties also include doing your research and knowing whether or not some of your interesting questions have already been answered.

As to the question of, "Why did 13th century people think that a woman cannot conceive without her consent?", the answer is fairly obvious. They were ignorant of how human biology worked and their beliefs were colored by centuries of religious and cultural misconceptions. After all, there was no scientific method back then to help separate fact from fiction. While it may be fun to ponder questions about the origins of why people used to think the world was flat, why women used to be blamed for bearing their husbands daughters instead of sons or why pre-law programs don't require a few credits of biology to enhance scientific understanding in their graduates, it is an entirely different matter to use ancient misunderstandings and prejudices to excuse current ignorance in our politicians.

"Assuming that a woman is a good judge of who will be a desirable father and engages in consensual relations with such people...."

This implies that there is a connection between a biological function (insemination) and a woman's mind to "okay" that inseminiation? This is one ignorant statement! A woman has no way of "deciding" whether she gets pregnant. She cannot will insemination away.

Also, if you look at that 5% of women who are raped are impregnanted: that 5% may sound like a small number, but it translates to over 32,000 pregnancies. That is a LARGE number of pregnancies from rape.

If we are going to have a real discussion here, let's try to have a LOGICAL and ACCURATE discussion.

Chuck,

1. Yes, I read your posts.

2. While, the legal definition of rape may sometimes be "muddy", if you throw out instances of consensual sex between minors, every rape is non-consensual and legitimate. What you keep referring to in your shades of gray scenario has been deemed by others as the Religious Right Rape Scale. This scale allows self righteous blowhards to debate a woman's bodily integrity and the legitimacy of each rape on a scale of 1 to 10 with a "slut rape" being a 1 and a "knife wielding psychopath breaking into a married woman's home while she sleeps dressed in button down footie pajamas and a locked chastity belt" a 10. There is no such thing as an illegitimate rape. No means no and rape is rape. In every circumstance, period.

3. While not a lawyer, I also have benefited from graduate training in the field of Biology and research evaluation and design. The articles I cited discuss the multitude of problems with designing good studies that address this question in addition to stating that the studies that have so far attempted to shed light on this issue are at odds with Mr. Akins and your 13th century legal scholars.

4. I did not simply say "people were ignorant then", I said "people were ignorant of how human biology worked." There's a difference and I would expect a legal scholar like yourself to understand the difference. Ignorance due to a lack of data is one thing, ignorance despite an abundance of data is another.

1. Why does it matter? What would we learn from your question?
2. There are too many variables anyway. Is the woman infertile? Is the woman ovulating? Is the woman on the pill? Is the rapist impotent? Did he use a condom? There are too many factors that make it impossible to answer such a a question, which I still believe it completely pointless anyway.
3. Let me remind you that many women are raped when they are unconscious (thanks to date rape drugs and alcohol, for example) and cannot "resist."
4. A woman who resists rape is resisting being overpowered and violated, not impregnanted.

@Karen, what do you define as a "real woman's [sic] issue"? Please, I would like to know what I *should* be stomping my feet about.

I have an 11-year-old daughter who has developmental delays. She will be starting middle school soon. Can you assure me that she will be kept safe? The NIC has found that 44% of American women under the age of 18 have been sexually assaulted at some point in her life. UNDER 18. Do we need to start stomping our feet when that number reaches 100%? Does that make it a "real" issue?

Well, that's kind of my point Chuck. Every rape, ignoring consensual sex between minors that lacks parental approval, is non-consensual and therefore forced. Therefore all rapes result in similar emotional and physiological traumas. So for you to claim that the current state of research doesn't refute Mr. Akin's opinion because it fails to distinguish mythological "benign" rapes from "knife-at-the-throat" rapes is at best disingenuous. Most rapes do not happen at knife-point. What you imply with your question is that rapes that occur by people other than strangers with a knife are somehow less traumatic to the woman. That assumption is wrong. It could be easily argued that a rape at knife point by a stranger might be less traumatic to a woman than rape by a trusted spouse, boyfriend, family member or co-worker. Forced sex is forced sex regardless of the means used to obtain it. The fact that you and Mr. Akin see a significant difference in the seriousness of rape depending upon the means used to carry it out is troubling and why you see nothing wrong with trying to legitimize that point-of-view is also an interesting question.

Glenn, since physical effects are what we are talking about, degrees of physical force are extremely relevant. We aren't talking about post hoc psychological harm here. If we were serious about testing the hypothesis "Is the probability of conception after forcible rape truly lower than the probability of conception in other cases, ceteris paribus?" we would measure degree of force used and include that as an explanatory variable. Nothing disingenuous about this. If you actually look at the legal definition of rape in most jurisdictions, it includes intercourse with victims who are drugged, drunk, unconscious, sleeping, mentally incompetent (thus incapable of consent) and so forth, not to mention under age. Saying that hopeless bias does not result from including such cases in a sample when the question is the effect of force is, well, ludicrous.

Ahhh, now I see the disconnect Chuck. Based on what you had previously written about knife-at-the-throat forced raped I thought you were using the term force with regards to the fact that the woman was being compelled to submit to sexual intercourse against her will. I had mistakenly assumed that you were trying to say that the emotional trauma and corresponding physiological changes resulting from a stranger-with-a-weapon situation could somehow result in a lower chance of conception.

Now I see that you were referring to changes in conception rates as a function of the amount of thrust or "force" being applied by the rapist during the sexual act. In that case, the experiment you want to design becomes much easier since you don't even need to look at actual rape victims. All you have to do is strap a dynamometer to a series of willing couples genitals and, ceteris paribus, plot the resulting rate of pregnancy vs force used during intercourse. That is a much more straight forward experiment and any significant findings could be applied clinically to couples having trouble conceiving by informing the father-to-be to try pushing softer, or harder depending on the experimental outcomes.

Also, it would be interesting to examine whether or not a person's likelihood of the using the phrase "ceteris paribus", when they could just as easily say "all things being equal,",is positively or negatively correlated to their degree of pretentiousness.

@Karen, I am troubled by the so-called "gaffe." Rape is rape. If, as Mr. Anasei, has stated, that Akin intended to say, "forcible" rape, as in "rape in the back alley by knifepoint," then he is belittling the women who have been raped by acquaintances or family members. Rape is always non-consensual.

We know that Akin is not the only public figure to attempt to redefine and miseducate people. Consider these:
1. In 1988, Republican Pennsylvania Rep. Stephen Freind said the odds that a woman who is raped will get knocked up are "one in millions and millions and millions" because rape causes a woman to "secrete a certain secretion" that kills evil sperm.
2. In 1995, North Carolina state Rep. Henry Aldridge told the House Appropriations Committee that "The facts show that people who are raped — who are truly raped — the juices don't flow, the body functions don't work and they don't get pregnant. Medical authorities agree that this is a rarity, if ever." Plan B: If your secretions can't kill evil sperm, you just "dry up" and brush yourself off after you're done being raped, baby-free.
3. In 1990, Texas Republican gubernatorial nominee Clayton Williams told ranchers that victims should take rape in stride and try to enjoy it — "If it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it.''

@Karen, pretty flimsy rebuttals.

I was basing my comments on the ongoing thread that we are not considering statutory rape, or as you call it "rape based on age." Nothing I have written about has to do with statutory rape.

And I think you have shown your hand: this is not an important "women's issue" because you are anti-abortion. I to am anti-abortion, but that has nothing to do with this discussion.

Karen, you were correct to avoid the term "statutory rape". It is a generic term that laymen think has a clear legal meaning, but it does not, and I have never read a statute that used it. Further, in the many jurisdictions that have abolished common law crimes, all forms of rape are, by definition, statutory, and the term is meaningless.