One thing is clear — Rep. Todd Akin probably should be talking to a few more real medical doctors before speaking about issues he clearly understands very little about. Because no matter what your views are on abortion in America, your views on rape should be pretty clear cut if you’re not living in the 1950s.
Women do not asked to be raped. It doesn’t matter what kind of clothing a woman is wearing, or what she said or did beforehand. There are no cases of “legitimate” rape.
And there is nothing the human body does that says, “Oh, I’m being raped, I’d better ensure I don’t get pregnant from this.”
Only an ignorant, sad and sadly misinformed politician could somehow think these things — much less say them in a television interview during the time he’s trying to get elected to the U.S. Senate.
Read on for the full quote and video…
Here’s what he said on Sunday during a wide-ranging interview (where abortion was just one of many topics covered), in case you missed it:
Interviewer: What about in the case of rape? Should it be legal or not?
Rep. Todd Akin: Well you know, people always want to try and make it as one of those things, how do you– how do you slice this particularly tough ethical question.
It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, uhh, the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. You know, I think there should be some punishment, but I think the punishment ought to be of the rapist and not attacking the child.
You have to wonder, first of all — what kind of doctors is Akin talking to that have told him this (if that’s even true)? Not doctors that have been to medical school in the past 4 or 5 decades, that’s for certain. And what exactly is a “legitimate rape?”
In a statement released earlier this morning, Rep. Akin — who has basically lost the Senate race in Missouri because of his unwise comments — said, “In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it’s clear that I misspoke in this interview, and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year.”
You’re a seasoned politician (of over 24 years) in an interview that was scheduled long ahead of time. You have policy statements on more than a half dozen issues. You’ve spoken on the issue of abortion previously, without “misspeaking.”
And now you’re lying to everyone suggesting your remarks were “off-the-cuff.” They were not. They were, in my opinion, a keen insight into your actual beliefs about abortion and rape. You’re only back-pedaling now because they have gotten you into hot water.
This is everything Americans hate about politicians — no matter what party they belong to. They can’t admit it when they’re wrong, nowhere have do they actually apologize for their ignorant, backwater views on rape, and they then use the opportunity not to step down from the race with dignity and some degree of honor, but instead to blast their opponent in the Senate race.
Worse are the vermin that carpetbag off of Akin’s statement, such as Bryan Fisher of the extremist group, the American Family Association. Earlier today, he wrote on Twitter: “Todd Akin is right: physical trauma of forcible rape can interfere w/ hormonal production, conception.”
In that tweet, Fisher linked to an article on ChristianLifeResources.com entitled ‘Rape Pregnancies Are Rare’ by Dr. John C. Wilkie, who wrote in 1999 that: ” Assault rape pregnancies are extremely rare. […] The numbers claimed have ranged the entire spectrum of possibilities. Some feminists have claimed as high as 5 to 10 percent, which is absurd. […] One of the most important reasons why a rape victim rarely gets pregnant, and that’s physical trauma. Every woman is aware that stress and emotional factors can alter her menstrual cycle.” ((Wilkie also provides a keen example of why physicians are not statisticians or mathematicians — nor should they try and be.))
This, of course, flies in the face of actual, you know, scientific data (which was published 3 years prior to Dr. Wilkie writing that article):
The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (aged 12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year. [emphasis added]
If 32,000 pregnancies per year is a “rare” event, then some people are living in a very strange, disconnected world.
Todd Akin, I’m certain, does not represent the views of most Missourians when it comes to rape. And it would be a shame to see the great state of Missouri elect such a sorry excuse for a man to the U.S. Senate.
Here’s the video:
Read the full article: 'Legitimate rape' comment by GOP's Todd Akin shakes up Missouri Senate race
24 comments
Until yesterday I was proud to be a Missourian. Thank you Dr. Grohol for providing an informed, diginifed refutation to this “ignorant, sad, and sadly misinformed politician.” You have given voice to the anger and rage I felt while watching this interview.
Simply…..appalling that anyone could be that ignorant…..”misspoke?!’ That is a gross understatement.
Glad you took the effort to note BOTH parties are equally misrepresented with ignorance, stupidity, and lack of judgment that disqualifies one for an office in politics. It just seems to be becoming pandemic irregardless of whether at state or federal levels.
If we gave a narcissist/antisocial scale to candidates these days, I would genuinely believe that over half would be disqualified for scores over 50%.
Which says a lot not only about the candidates, but also the public who votes for incumbents, who I again genuinely believe would score at the top of the lists for the top 20 percentile!
Just my opinion. Do not ever accept politicians as patients, not that any would be interested in psychological care. Goes against their grain.
It’s great to unite against a common foe who says something so idiotic that we can all agree that we are against it.
The only thing is it’s so sad that to make a case properly against Akin we have to face the rape statistics and rape pregnancy statistics, which are just depressing.
Oh my poor uneducated USA!! When will science prevail over ignorance? You can have your religious beliefs AND not sound like a moron—consider science your friend.
Yeesh. Safe guards against pregnancy? Talk about a stretch. Women under extensive stress may have a miscarriage if the embryo or fetus is male. Females are more resilient and can survive a significant amount of maternal psychological distress. Unfortunately, things such as depression and trauma are correlated with child behavioral problems…
Rape is very, very under-reported, especially within committed partners – marriage, common law, engaged, etc. I would not be surprised if pregnancy rates from rape were higher. Additionally, abortion rates are higher amongst minorities.
I can’t say I’ve met anyone who thinks abortion is an absolutely lovely activity that all should partake in. And I hate to say that one human is more important than another, and I hate to say that abortions will happen anyway. However, women have been terminating pregnancies for thousands of years, in response to being unable to support even more children monetarily or a sense that there is something wrong with the pregnancy (Several pregnancies will give you some idea when something isn’t right). It is with modern technology that we are able to perform abortions with significantly more safely.
I am a parent. I love children. But I’d rather women have abortions under the supervision of a physician versus taking cocktails of herbs or using foreign objects which could result in death of both parties.
Victims of rape pregnancies should not commit the sin of abortion. They must follow the Lords wishes and give birth to a holy child. The rapist is the sinner; he should come forward and offer to pay child support. The mother has a choice of accepting the money or calling the cops.
He should come forward and pay child support?! Why didn’t anybody else think of that? Afterall this rapist is an upstanding and honorable member of society! And the woman … already traumatized and you believe she should suffer more and give birth to appease your God?! Simply outrageous! ! As for the child support, if he did pay that would mean he’d be in his victims life for 18the years minimum and probably have parental rights … I’m calling B.S. on this one.
@Melvin. Man, you have really been smoking the strong stuff.
To the author of the piece, although I agree that in a sane world, someone like Akin SHOULD lose his race, not only for being an insensitive jerk, but also for showing his pre-school level understanding of reproduction, I doubt this will hurt him in the least with his supporters. They will take the position that although they don’t like what he said, it’s STILL better than voting for the dreaded pro-choice candidate instead. Many of these constituents are single issue voters: they want Christianity to be the order of the day in government, and they don’t care how warped their candidate is, as long as he’s “on our side.”
People are up in arms about Akins’ medieval views of rape, but what is more shocking to me is his fundamental lack of understanding of basic biology – and he’s on the Science and Technology Committee?????? Ack Ack Ack.
And now we hear Rep. King from NY tell us he’s never heard of a woman getting pregnant from statutory rape or incest. What planet are these men coming from to walk into Congress each day, because to make these comments without some moment of smirking behind their backs, are they truly not in touch with the realities of life outside their homes, or I have to ask as seriously as they claim their comments are, what women raised and married these guys?
The Republicans can kiss this election goodbye per the women vote alone. Unless these repugnocants are going to repeal the amendment to allow women to vote by November 5th. This is scary commentary for a party living in 2012.
This is 2012, right?
Boy, he crammed an awful lot of stupidity into just a few words, didn’t he? I was a nurse (still am) back in the late 60s and took care of women who seized with fever and infection and bled and, too often, died as they tried to rid themselves of an unwanted pregnancy. Frequently, the women would not tell us what they did to themselves for fear they would be arrested, so we blindly stumbled forth trying to take care of them. One young woman I vividly remember was raped repeatedly by her father; she wanted to die so she did not have to go home to him. Do we really want to return to the “good old days?”
It is hardly about his unapologetic ignorance – it’s how very close he came to the old insinuation that women who are raped either “deserved it” or “wanted it.” The inability to allow women to make their own decision about their own bodies – from a man who is an idiot – yet who might be placed in a position to make decisions for others – is terrifying. It’s American sharia. At least it was too much for the GOP leadership – who nonetheless would remove birth control from many Americans.
To be honest I can wholeheartedly understand what he’s saying. Yes, 32,000 births via rape is a large number but it is NOT a large number statistically or relatively. there are a few million births a day, 32,000 is a very SMALL number when you think about it and as it said in a “study”, it was only 5%. It seems to me like the lot of you never took statistics in school, because 5% is a small number, just to inform you.
I wouldn’t go as far as insulting mothers who became so via rape, but he has a point. A female’s body will experience complications birth wise after something so traumatic as rape.
Know whats the leading cause in birth complications? Stress. Guess what rape causes?
I wonder if Dr Grohol or any of you outraged commenters actually read the “scientic data” linked in the article. I read some interesting material yesterday that shows the study to be seriously flawed.
Kind of makes that snarky comment about doctors and statistics look like projection. You do know what that is?
Yes, I most certainly do, and I believe this campaign is coming up with some of the most hideous examples of it for a great political science course for Fall 2013. I do not like Obama, his campaign will also redefine the term hypocrisy for years to come as well, but the pervasive rhetoric from Republicans that goes beyond demeaning women is so ill fit to allow a role as representatives for a country that has more than 50% of citizens as females, well, is beyond primitive.
There is no defense for indefensible behaviors that this post relates. It is a shame there will be a quantifiable percentage of people who will defend this man’s comments for no other reason than the party he allegedly represents.
Think about the term “blind loyalty”. Or, not.
Your right — in some populations, the rate of rape-related pregnancies is even higher. Here’s one that reported a pregnancy rate of 20 percent among abused women seeking a protection order:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15625149
The critique raised by a comment to the original research paper itself cited research that is (a) 17 years old, (b) has never been replicated, and (c) had a research sample size of a whole 10 people. Red flags all.
Additional research supports that rape-related pregnancies is in the 5 to 10% range. See for example, Gottschall & Gottschall (2003), which conducted a randomized sample survey of 405 women who had been raped. 26 of them reported pregnancies due to the rape, for an incidence of 6.42%. When the researchers adjusted for use the contraceptives, the rate climbed to 7.98%.
Compare this to per-incident pregnancy rate in consensual, unprotected sex in a large-scale study (Wilcox et al., 2001) of 3.1%.
In other words, the study found women who were raped were nearly twice as likely to get pregnant from the rape — arriving at the exact opposite conclusion that Akin suggested.
Science is amazing and fun — when you have the facts and know what the hell you are talking about. If you don’t, then you should just shut up. Some people seem to revel and take pride in their ignorance; these are not the kinds of enlightened, self-aware folks we want running our country.
References
Gottschall, JA. & Gottschall, TA. (2003). Are per-incident rape-pregnancy rates higher than per-incident consensual pregnancy rates? Human Nature, 14, 1-20.
Wilcox, AD., et al. (2001). Likelihood of conception with a single act of intercourse: Providing benchmark rates for assessment of post-coital contraceptives. Contraception, 63, 211-215.
“Science is amazing and fun — when you have the facts and know what the hell you are talking about. If you don’t, then you should just shut up.”
I agree. And neither of you doctors who replied to me said one word about the study you originally cited. One of the main issues is that many of the pregnancies were not caused by the rape itself, but by consensual sex near the time of the rape.
There are other problems with the methodology used, but apparently your bias or agenda prevents you from seeing any of this or commenting in public about those problems.
I’m guessing both of you are fans of “settled science”, let me know how that bland diet is working for your ulcer, and be careful to use only FDA approved leeches.
“One of the main issues is that many of the pregnancies were not caused by the rape itself, but by consensual sex near the time of the rape.”
This is simply not true. While that’s a criticism brought up regarding the study, the study wasn’t constructed in such a way as to say — one way or another definitively — whether the pregnancy was directly caused by the rape. It was simply a question asked on the survey, and we assume — perhaps incorrectly — that people will answer it as truthfully as they can (since there’s little incentive to lie in this specific kind of research).
But that’s the whole point of the second and third studies I cited in the above comment. When you have a second or third datapoint that confirms your first datapoint, you have what we call in science a more robust finding.
I have not found any research to suggest that rape-related pregnancies are virtually non-existent or negligible (e.g. less than 1% or heck, even 0.01% of rapes) — suggestions made by not only Rep. Akin, but also other commenters in this thread.
Isn’t it enough that (primarily) women are abused by (primarily) men in this manner, that we now also call into question just how bad the trauma is? Women get pregnant by rape, end of story. Three scientific studies suggest the percentage of women who do so is in the 5 to 10 percent range — with some specific populations reporting much higher rates.
If someone wants to point me to research that says otherwise, I’m all ears.
John
You are correct that the study was not constructed to discern ” one way or another definitively — whether the pregnancy was directly caused by the rape”. That is precisely the problem. And yet you accepted their results without question. I have not had the opportunity to read the other studies you mentioned, so I don’t know if their methods were equally as flawed. Given your sloppiness in assessing the first study, you will have to excuse me if I don’t accept that these studies confirm the results on your say so.
In the end, taking a misogynist or frank dismissal of the needs and concerns of women who are sexually assaulted and then further traumatized by an unwanted pregnancy is not going to earn the support of voters who have an investment in said issue. Frankly, if I were Mitt Romney and really cared about the needs and interests of women voters, I would define MY position on this matter by next Monday AM, before the convention, so if he alienates the Republican party and extremist Christian interests who favor embryos over living and involved citizens then that convention can find an alternative candidate that represents their alleged representative values for America.
2 points and I am done at this thread:
1. Abortion is as gray an issue as it can get. Sometimes it is completely appropriate and necessary, and sometimes it is frivolous and impulsive. You will never hear either extreme of those shouting down the loudest acknowledge this perspective.
2. If Mitt Romney were to run as an independent candidate as of now, I would vote for him as he is a better choice outside the Republican party than our current occupant of the White House who is running for himself, not as a President interested in solving the real issues this country is struggling with. It won’t happen, but watch the convention next week implode on women’s issues and the wrath of god via Issac.
Good luck Americans, you need it!
Mitt Romney has been in favor of allowing abortion in cases of rape since he became pro-life. He has made that clear. If you care about that yet were unaware of his position, one wonders why.
Barack Obama is in favor of “late term abortions” and is on record as opposing giving any support to a child who survives an attempted abortion.
Interesting terms you use, embryos vs living and involved citizens. They are both human and both alive. Are you proud of that moral position?
The guy is a dope is should not be running for the senate. That being said, 30,000 pregnancies from rape each year, at 5% rate of pregnancy, thats 600,000 rapes/year. We have big problems if thats the case
There is no evolutionary benefit to the female body refusing to impregnate as long as the genetic material is viable. Upon entering ovulation a woman’s smell changes as does her walk, producing subliminal attraction to males and particularly to rapists. Therefore rape is more likely to produce an unwanted pregnancy, not less so.
Sorry for commenting again, but after reading this enclosed link from The Washington Post this AM , I have to ask what is wrong with religions to perversely frame an act of violence or destruction by volition is to be framed positively on the victim.
http://m.washingtonpost.com/politics/todd-akins-rape-comments-find-sympathy-among-conservative-women-in-his-district/2012/08/27/732fd27c-f076-11e1-adc6-87dfa8eff430_story.html
Interested readers can chose for themselves if this is reasonable or clueless.