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US row over Congressman Todd Akin's rape remark

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OntarioVanMan

OntarioVanMan

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layoutshooter said:
I was just asking. I did not say I could or could not prove it. I kinda think I would prefer to error on the side of life. One cannot believe in God without believing that there is more to the human being than it's body.

AGAIN, NOT saying what to do in the case of rape. I am saying it is NOT as simple, on either side of the argument as some wish to make it.
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Exactly..we could go back and forth all day and be in the same spot....

Just got a load headed toward home...CYA....
 
Turtle

Turtle

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OntarioVanMan said:
it is not a baby.....not even a fetus during the 1st trimester....only when you bring religion onto the topic....the science is pretty clear...it is called a zygote.... not capable of life outside the incubator..in this case a woman...

Week 4....
By the time it reaches the uterus, the rapidly dividing ball of cells — now known as a blastocyst — has separated into two sections. The inner group of cells will become the embryo. The outer group will become the cells that nourish and protect it. On contact, it will burrow into the uterine wall for nourishment. This process is called implantation.
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That's why there is such great effort to legislate the redefining of terms like "baby" and "human being" to become "at conception". It's a way to force a certain set of religious morals and beliefs onto others, against their will.
 
Monty

Monty

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the guy made a stupid comment, id think pretty much based on his own ignorant beliefs..He is an idoit....
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I was listening to Glenn Beck today, (wonderful source I know, however), he said the theory about "trauma" being a deterent to pregnancy was advanced in a thesis in 1972, and then taken as gospel in 1999. A nurse calling into his show said she was taught such in her medical studies.

As I try to swing this back to the original topic, it seems that the man may have been completely honest and above board in his statement. True, or not.

I may try to go back and search whatever Beck was talking about to confirm it.
 
bobwg

bobwg

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Local news here in St Louis had a doctor on from Washinton University and if I remeber correctly he said only about 5% of rape victims get pregnant maybe what Akin says could be partially true ?
 
EnglishLady

EnglishLady

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From the the Centers for Disease Control ...

"There are more than 32,000 pregnancies from rape each year"


In a 1996 study in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, researchers surveyed 4,008 American women for three years. Among women in their prime reproductive years, 12 to 45, 5 percent of rapes resulted in pregnancy, mostly among adolescents.

Reuters
 
jaminjim

jaminjim

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EnglishLady said:
From the the Centers for Disease Control ...

"There are more than 32,000 pregnancies from rape each year"


In a 1996 study in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, researchers surveyed 4,008 American women for three years. Among women in their prime reproductive years, 12 to 45, 5 percent of rapes resulted in pregnancy, mostly among adolescents.

Reuters
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Unless I read it wrong.
 
Monty

Monty

Expert Expediter
Mecklenburg — an assistant clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Minnesota Medical School at the time — could not have known how prescient his words would feel 40 years later.

While U.S. Rep. Todd Akin cited only "doctors" as his source of information about the rarity of pregnancy resulting from rape, it is two pages, from Mecklenburg's 1972 article, "The Indications for Induced Abortion: A Physician's Perspective," that have influenced two generations of anti-abortion activists hoping to build a medical case to ban all abortions without exception.

In Mecklenburg's original article, he wrote that pregnancy resulting from rape "is extremely rare," and cited as an example the city of Buffalo, N.Y., which had not seen "a pregnancy from confirmed rape in over 30 years." Other cities — Chicago, Washington, St. Paul — also had experienced lengthy spells without a rape-caused pregnancy, Mecklenburg wrote.
The reasons were numerous: Not all rapes result in "a completed act of intercourse," Mecklenburg wrote, adding that it was "improbable" that a rape would occur "on the 1-2 days of the month in which the woman would be fertile."

Mecklenburg's third reason seems to have been picked up by Akin.

A woman exposed to the trauma of rape, Mecklenburg wrote, "will not ovulate even if she is 'scheduled' to."
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Mecklenburg's article, and the statistics cited in it, have been used again and again in the decades since.

Hadley Arkes, Amherst College political science professor and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, cited the Buffalo statistic in his 1986 book, "First Things: An Inquiry Into the First Principles of Morals and Justice."

"The number of pregnancies resulting from rape in this country is minuscule," Arkes concluded, adding, "In addition, the fear induced by rape may interrupt the normal operation in hormones in the body of the woman, which in turn may prevent ovulation and conception."
That kind of scholarly declaration has proved irresistible to some politicians.

In 1988, Pennsylvania state Rep. Stephen Freind told a radio interviewer that the odds of a woman becoming pregnant after being raped "are one in millions and millions and millions." The trauma of the rape, Freind explained, causes a woman to 'secrete a certain secretion, which has a tendency to kill sperm."

His source, Freind said, was a "Dr. Mecklenburg."

In 1995, North Carolina state Rep. Henry Aldridge told the state House appropriations committee that when women are "truly raped ... the juices don't flow, the body functions don't work and they don't get pregnant."
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Akin appears to have picked up conclusions from 1972 article now hotly disputed : Stltoday

So once more, I submit, Akin may have been honest in his statements and beliefs.
 
bobwg

bobwg

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EnglishLady said:
Between 12 and 45.5% of rapes result in pregnancy according to the Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology
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Ksdk.com Dr George Macones of the Washington University Obstetrics and Gynecology Department says pregancy among rape victims is rare and only about 5% get preg. THe numbers you show 12-45 seems to be a very wide range
 
jaminjim

jaminjim

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bobwg said:
Ksdk.com Dr George Macones of the Washington University Obstetrics and Gynecology Department says pregancy among rape victims is rare and only about 5% get preg. THe numbers you show 12-45 seems to be a very wide range
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So you skipped over my post because........
 
bobwg

bobwg

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EnglishLady said:
No you are quite right - my multi tasking chip failed me LOL


Though I do believe that the sheer number of 32,000 pregnancies a year should have been enough to make one gasp in horror .....
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Yes makes one gasp but the point is why is the number only 5% What factors are keeping them from getting preg? wrong time of the month? birth control? is it possible that Todd Akin is partially correct about the body some how shutting down or what ever you want to call it to prevent the preg?
 
EnglishLady

EnglishLady

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bobwg said:
Yes makes one gasp but the point is why is the number only 5% What factors are keeping them from getting preg? wrong time of the month? birth control? is it possible that Todd Akin is partially correct about the body some how shutting down or what ever you want to call it to prevent the preg?
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From American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

A woman who is raped at a vulnerable time in her menstrual cycle is as likely to conceive and retain a pregnancy as a woman who was voluntarily attempting pregnancy," said ACOG's Levy. "There's absolutely no validity to any sort of theory that the trauma related to rape - or to any thing else for that matter - would shut down ovulation that has already begun."

And, sadly, there may be a number who will not have reported anything
 
bobwg

bobwg

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EnglishLady said:
From American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

A woman who is raped at a vulnerable time in her menstrual cycle is as likely to conceive and retain a pregnancy as a woman who was voluntarily attempting pregnancy," said ACOG's Levy. "There's absolutely no validity to any sort of theory that the trauma related to rape - or to any thing else for that matter - would shut down ovulation that has already begun."

And, sadly, there may be a number who will not have reported anything
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So how do they explain only 5% get preg?????????????
 
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