Legitimately Ignorant

I actually think this whole controversy of Congressman Todd Akin using the term "legitimate rape" is overblown.  Granted, there should be no such thing as an illegitimate rape, and rape must be horrific for a woman no matter how it occurs; but this argument is nothing new.  People have been making attempts to distinguish violent, forcible rape by strangers from statutory rape for years.  To be fair to Mr. Akin his intent (as much as I find it ridiculous) was no different than arguments that have been made many times before.

All this discussion of the word legitimate is completely missing the point!  Instead, we should be looking at what he said next:

"...the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Holy moley!  Now that is scary!  Akin is implying that if you are forcibly raped you won't get pregnant.  In fact, if you parse his apology carefully, he never disavows the implication.  I'm no expert, but every Internet search I just did for the past two hours came up with nothing but evidence to the contrary.  So where did this crazy idea come from?

The only reference I could find is from a mathematically and logically flawed piece written back in 1999 (apparently there was also a previous book with these ideas in it).  Here is the quote:

"Finally, factor in what is certainly 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. To get and stay pregnant a woman's body must produce a very sophisticated mix of hormones. Hormone production is controlled by a part of the brain that is easily influenced by emotions. There's no greater emotional trauma that can be experienced by a woman than an assault rape. This can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy. So what further percentage reduction in pregnancy will this cause? No one knows, but this factor certainly cuts this last figure by at least 50 percent and probably more."

So the author (Dr. John C. Willke, M.D.) admits that "no one knows," then immediately makes up a number of 50% based on no evidence whatsoever.  The funny thing here is that even if you believe Dr. Willke, he still would imply that half of the pregnancies that result from violent rape cannot be avoided.  So even the probable source of the idea doesn't think all violent rape pregnancies can be avoided.  (Note: The mathematically flawed conclusion of Dr. Willke's paper is that forcible rape pregnancies are incredibly rare; the implication being that it affects so few women as to not really be a concern compared to the number of abortions that occur.  Refuting the paper's obvious logical flaws are left as an exercise to the reader, or may be the subject of a future blog post.)

My concern, and the reason not to spread lies like this, is because it encourages and allows some people to believe that women just don't get pregnant from forcible rapes, and therefore there is no need to protect women or provide any exceptions in those situations.  Worse yet, it may encourage others to think women who do get pregnant after rape somehow weren't "really raped."

That a candidate for the United States Senate could be so foolish as to spread a clearly false concept just to make a specious argument is dangerous, and only undermines every well-meaning argument pro-lifers may want to make.  To rush to this man's defense when he continues to stand by this kind of misguided thinking makes all pro-lifers look bad and appear to be legitimately ignorant.  Toss this guy out, do not continue to rally to his defense.

UPDATE 1 8/22/12: Anderson Cooper did a great piece debunking Dr. Willke's claims, basically echoing the sentiments of this blog post.

UPDATE 2 8/23/12: Congressman Akin called into a TV news show last night and finally disavowed the comments and admitted he was misinformed.  Unfortunately, he may have missed the media coverage opportunity and may not even care to highlight it: I can find almost no coverage of his disavowal this morning, and no mention of disavowing the medical issue on his website as of today.  His initial comments on the Today show about being "medically wrong" don't cut it, because he accompanied it with the statement that "pregnancy can happen as a result of rape" which doesn't clarify his previous distinction that he himself made between forcible and statutory rape.