The first time I heard or read the completely false statement that women couldn't become pregnant by rape,
as a justification for the assertion that women would lie about being raped to get an abortion was not from Todd Akin. It is not unique to him,
it is not unique among Republicans.
We wrote about it
here, documenting some of the sources. Freind circulated his claim that a woman couldn't get pregnant from 'real' rape, way back in 1988. It has been circulating in the ignorance only/anti-abortion circles for a long, long time. It had been embraced by the more extreme right throughout the 20th century; it is common in ignorant red states with poor educational standards, and apparently low professional standards. It is what you get with red states - poor education results, low education funding, religion dominating science (specifically Christianity, either Roman Catholicism or fundamental evangelical versions), and support male dominance over women. These are the same people who want to remove anti-gender discrimination and to remove guarantees of equal pay for equal work for women.
It was said relatively recently by conservative State Senator Chuck Winder, who straight up claimed he thought women would lie about being raped, earlier this year, as a rebuttal to objections regarding forced, medically unnecessary ultrasound as a condition of receiving an abortion.
From
the Buzz Feed:
Federal Judge James Leon Holmes made a similar
claim back in 1997, and had written a letter in 1980 claiming that concern for rape victims was a red herring because the frequency of women being raped was similar to the frequency of snowfall in Miami. It complicated his 2003 appointment to the federal bench by George W. Bush. There was an attempt made to justify his claims about biology under the heading of religion, arguing that by faulting his lack of factual accuracy it was an assault on his religious beliefs.
The inherent assault on women's equality, and reproductive rights, and factual science was ignored. It was one more instance of belief being given more value and legitimacy by Republicans than the issue of believing something factually verifiable over ideology.
And, appallingly from anyone with a medical degree who ought to know better before being allowed near anyone in a professional capacity, per the Columbus Dispatch (Ohio):
"I think that life begins when the chromosomes of the sperm and egg line up,"
said Dr. Richard Dobbins, who works in the emergency department at Hardin
Memorial Hospital in Kenton.
Dobbins also questioned the need for
emergency contraception in rape cases, saying that most women either are not
fertile during assault or do not become pregnant because the trauma prompts a
hormonal response that prevents ovulation.
The furthest back I had traced this before was
a complete misrepresentation of recognized medical journals and other sources by another M.D., John C. Wilke, another anti-abortion nut, who opined more extensively about rape and conception inaccurately, in detail. I can only wonder if they were educated at some crackpot Christian Medical School with dodgy accreditation like the law school that graduated Michele Bachmann. Wilke, as of Monday (8/20/'12) was still doubling down on his medical fallacy.
There was similar false statements, circa 1995, made in the North Carolina Legislature, to the Appropriations Committee, by Rep. Henry Aldridge, a dentist by profession, to justify eliminating an abortion fund for poor women. From
the San Francisco Chronicle:
"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," said Aldridge, a 71-year-old periodontist. "Medical authorities agree that this is a rarity, if ever."
"It's really common for rape victims to be blamed for being raped," said Margaret Henderson, president of the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault.
"But this is the first time I've heard of rape victims being blamed for becoming pregnant. I am both flabbergasted and offended by this man's remarks."
Aldridge had the floor during the committee meeting as he was trying to apologize for earlier remarks implying that victims of rape or incest are sexually promiscuous.
"I would invite the representative from Pitt to ask any woman who is the victim of rape or incest if she is being sexually promiscuous," Democratic Representative Dan Blue told him at the time.
Later, Aldridge defended his comments.
"To get pregnant, it takes a little cooperation. And there ain't much cooperation in a rape," he said.
A subcommittee had recommended cutting the fund from $1.2 million to $50,000 next year. Abortions would have been limited to cases of rape, incest or pregnancies that put the mother's life at risk.
But I think the instance of someone using this factually false argument that is the most offensive, the most egregious, the most appalling was this one, reported by
the New York Times:
During a 1998 Senate campaign in Arkansas, the Republican candidate Dr. Fay Boozman claimed that hormones generated by fear usually prevented rape victims from getting pregnant, according to the doctor’s remarks in a report in The Times that year:
His reasoning: Pregnancy rarely occurs after rape because the stress of the assault triggers a biochemical reaction in the victim that makes conception unlikely. The Senator, who also is an ophthalmologist, said he knew this to be the case from anecdotal information he had picked up over the years and from his own medical residency in the 1970’s at the University of Arkansas Medical Center.
After he lost that election, Dr. Boozman was appointed to run the Arkansas Department of Health by the governor at the time, Mike Huckabee.
Now to be fair, Dr. Boozman DID at some later point, admit that his belief was 'not statistically based', but as wikipedia noted, "Dr. Boozman was also a former medical advisor to a
crisis pregnancy center."
Pregnancy centers exist solely to persuade women not to have abortions; as an ophthalmologist, Dr. Boozman would not have been qualified to provide gynecological medical advice to women. I have to wonder how many women met Dr. Boozman in that crisis pregnancy center believing he was a different kind of doctor.
This is pertinent because the whole premise that women can't get pregnant from rape is part of the larger pattern of deliberate misinformation, and the intentional substitution of faith and ideology for science that is part of the right wing political agenda.
Crisis Pregnancy centers are notorious for providing women false or factually inaccurate medical information.
I include it here because at issue is not only that the far right, which has become the majority of the current Republican party, appears to be intentionally ill informed on matters of sex and reproduction, but they insist on making their factually false beliefs replace factual knowledge, including in sex education curricula and in reproductive-related law. This is in significant measure an attempt to make Christianity a state-sponsored religion, part of the effort by the religious right wing to make the U.S. a Christian theocracy, not a democracy. This represents a war on women, a war against sex, a war against science, but most of all it represents a war on the fundamental premise of the United States not having a state religion.
From
Wikipedia:
CPCs that qualify as
medical clinics may also provide pregnancy testing, sonograms, and other services; however, the vast majority are not licensed and provide no medical services.
[1] CPCs have been reported to disseminate
false medical information, usually but not exclusively about the supposed
health risks and
mental health risks of abortion.
[11][12]
CPCs are typically
run by pro-life Christians according to a conservative Christian philosophy,
[13] and they often operate in affiliation with one of three non-profit organizations:
Care Net,
Heartbeat International, and
Birthright International. There are over 4,000 CPCs in the United States, as compared with well under 750
abortion clinics. Canada has roughly 200 CPCs and about 25 abortion clinics.
[14
At least 20 U.S. states provide funding for CPCs,
[5] and from from 2001 to 2005, 50 CPCs received $30 million in funding from the U.S. federal government.
[1] By 2006, U.S. CPCs had received more than $60 million dollars of federal funding, including some funding earmarked for
abstinence-only programs.
[16]
False medical information
Journalists, medical researchers, congressional investigators, prospective CPC clients, and pro-choice advocates have routinely found that CPCs disseminate false medical information.
[12] In a few cases, such information may be based on decades-old studies that have been discredited by more recent research.
[13] In others, CPCs claim an existing scientific consensus in favor of such information.
[1] The information is usually about the supposed health risks of abortion; centers fail to mention that abortion is 11 to 12 times safer than childbirth.
[13][27] Some centers even say that "terminating a pregnancy is far more dangerous than carrying a baby to term", although the opposite is the case.
[11]
One common piece of medical misinformation is the assertion of a link between
abortion and breast cancer.
[12][1][4][11][13][22][27][33][34][35][36][37][38] One crisis pregnancy center counselor is reported to have told a client that "50 percent of women who have an abortion get breast cancer and 30 percent die within a year of the procedure";
[36] others have claimed a 50% increase,
[1]:8 an 80% increase,
[1]:8,
[11][35] a doubled increase,
[1]:8[37] a quadrupled increase,
[39] or said that a client with breast cancer in her family would certainly get cancer and die if she had an abortion.
[35] Major medical bodies (including the
National Cancer Institute[40]) say that there is no link between abortion and breast cancer.
[13][22][33][34][35]
Another is the assertion of a link between
abortion and mental health problems. CPC counselors are reported to have conveyed various supposed psychological consequences of abortion, including high rates of depression, "post-abortion syndrome", post-traumatic stress disorder, suicide, substance abuse, sexual and relationship dysfunction, propensity to child abuse, and other emotional problems.
[1][5][11][13][22][34][35][38][39][41][42][43] Figures included a 50% chance of long-term emotional problems
[34] or trauma,
[1] nine in ten women suffering "post-abortion syndrome",
[1] and a sevenfold increase in the suicide rate;
[1] one center said that anyone who had had an abortion was certain to experience mental health problems like those suffered by Vietnam veterans.
[1] Neither the
American Psychiatric Association nor the
American Psychological Association recognizes the existence of "post-abortion syndrome", and an American Psychological Association review of relevant studies found that "abortion is usually psychologically benign."
[1][22][34][35]
CPCs may also claim that surgical abortion is a dangerous procedure, with a high risk of perforation or infection.
[5][13][34][35][37][39][41][43] One CPC counselor is reported to have told an undercover investigator that a patient was left needing a
colostomy bag after her bowel was perforated;
[39] several reports mention that a CPC described or depicted a woman dying as a result of the procedure.
[35][37][44] However, fewer than 0.3% of women who have abortions experience complications that necessitate hospitalization.
[34]
The alleged risk of perforation and infection is also part of the assertion that abortion negatively impacts future childbearing, by increasing the risk of infertility, miscarriages, complications, ectopic pregnancy, or fetal health problems.
[1][11][13][34][35][38][39][41][42][43] One center claimed that there was a one in four chance of not being able to carry another pregnancy.
[43] These claims are not supported by medical data.
[1][34][43]
Besides false information about health risks of abortion, CPCs have also been found to disseminate misinformation about birth control methods, in particular the idea that
contraception and condoms do not work or have
harmful effects.
[13][21][22][34][35][39][44] Some counselors said that "all condoms are defective and have slots and holes in them"
[13] or that they fail "something like 40 percent of the time."
[22] Other centers said that condoms were permeable to HIV or other diseases,
[21] or that hormonal contraceptives had abortifacient effects and did long-term harm to women's health, such as causing infertility and cancer,
[34][35] while one said that condoms caused cancer.
[39]
Other false information may concern the methodology of pregnancy tests,
[44] the advisability of STI testing on pregnant women,
[35] the comparative risk, availability, and advisability of abortion at different stages of pregnancy,
[37][39][43][45] descriptions of female anatomy,
[43] the rate of postpartum depression among women who carry to term,
[1] the progression of fetal development,
[37][39] fetal pain,
[37] the possibility of getting pregnant from rape,
[39] the progression of pregnancy,
[21] and the number of pregnancies that end in natural miscarriages.
[21]
Pro-choice organizations like Planned Parenthood, the
National Abortion Federation, and Choice Ireland have criticized CPCs' dissemination of false medical information.
[4][45][46] Care Net denounces "any form of deception in its corporate advertising or individual conversations with its clients", though they also say of their promotion of an abortion–breast cancer link that their "role is clearly to include this possible risk when [they] educate clients about all the risks of abortions."
[27]
This is in the larger context this year of efforts by the right in trying to redefine rape to eliminate statutory rape, or rape where the victim is drugged by date-rape drugs, or otherwise rendered incapable of giving consent. The attempt was to only define rape if it was violent enough, not if it was simply under threat of violence or coercion of immediate personal harm, or other fear. Rape should be defined as sex without consent, and against the wishes of one of the parties.
(Although this IS true, sort of, of ducks being able to avoid conception from some kinds of forced sexual penetration in certain select species of waterfowl, but it has to do with an adaptation of vaginal position, and length, not hormones or secretions.)
This is in the larger context of the right to eliminate both contraception and abortion rights and to gut health care for women, which drastically erodes women's capacity to determine their own lives and to be independent human beings. It is reflected as well in the failures of abstinence only sex education that provides false and inaccurate information on pregnancy, and which provides ignorance in place of education. It is part of an attack on women and an attempt to regress human sexuality back to the darkest of the dark ages.
Specifically, in addressing the issue of rape, as if some rape is more acceptable than others,
the New York Times noted:
On Monday, Mr. Akin appeared on Mike Huckabee’s radio program and said, “I was talking about forcible rape.” As Slate blogger David Weigel explains, the use of that term in a bill introduced by House Republicans last year — and the apparent effort to create tiers of rape in federal law — provoked controversy. While the term was eventually dropped from the legislation, Mr. Akin, and Representative Paul Ryan, were among the co-sponsors of the original bill.
What this really amounts to is an attempt to minimize the crime of rape, to shift the blame and responsibility for rape from men to women, and to try to justify denying abortions to women who have been raped. There are some 32,000 rapes a year that result in pregnancy, according to the CDC; and because rape is so under-reported, the number is certainly much higher.