Think about that for a damned minute. Every species on the planet is designed to endure stress and prosper. If all it took was stress to prevent pregnancy then civilization would have died out a dozen times in recorded history alone. One of the greatest stresses there is physically is lack of food. Yet women in Ethiopia kept on managing to get pregnant.
So, you’re going with a)A woman’s reproductive system is not affected by stress? Not at all? Ever? That is the only way that would make Akin completely wrong isn’t it?
Miscarriage rate in pregnancies deriving from rape is 15-20%, standard pregnancy miscarriage rate is 10-20%, so its not the major factor that people make it out to be, the biggest factors are still the woman’s diet and lifestyle during the pregnancy. Slightly elevated risks of pre-eclampsia are also a possibility.
Trying to inject some facts and science into this absurd non-story.
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(This one is a bit technical but the following section sums it up rather well.)
We should bear in mind that an acute-stress-induced surge of LH is shortly preceded by an elevation of serum progesterone from the adrenal glands. This fact suggests that such an elevation of serum progesterone may advance the secretory transformation of the endometrium resulting in embryo-endometrium asynchrony and consequently reduced chances of implantation and pregnancy if ovulation and fertilization took place.
http://www.rbej.com/content/8/1/53
“The most common causes of failure to ovulate are:
Stress, weight fluctuations, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (P.C.O.S.). Other causes may include disorders of the pituitary gland, thyroid gland and raised prolactin levels.”
http://cairoivf.com/treatments-ovulation_induction.html
“In conclusion, acute stress on the day of proestrus can affect female reproductive physiology. Moreover, the angiotensinergic system, through AT(1) receptors, participates in the effects of acute stress in the morning of proestrus.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17573075
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Animal breeding also is affected by stress. Zoos, in particular, have difficulty getting some animals to reproduce in captivity, Bentley said.
Based on animal experiments, researchers attribute much of this stress effect on sexual function to an increase in glucocorticoids - stress hormones - produced by the adrenal gland. In the brain, these glucocorticoids suppress the main reproductive hormone, GnRH, which in turn causes a shut-down of the release of the gonadotropins luteinizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone by the pituitary, and then a suppression of testosterone, estradiol and sexual behavior.
In 2000, however, a new reproductive hormone was discovered in birds and dubbed gonadotropin-inhibitory hormone (GnIH) because it had the opposite effect of GnRH - it inhibited release of gonadotropins, thereby suppressing reproduction.
“It’s very adaptive to not be wasting resources on reproduction during times of acute stress, to just shut down reproduction for 24 hours or so until the stress is gone,” said co-author Daniela Kaufer, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of integrative biology who looks at how stress affects molecular processes in the brain. “These functions go back in evolution a long way.”
. . ..
Kirby showed that acutely stressed rats showed increased RFRP levels for several hours, but that levels returned to normal by the next day. Chronically stressed rats, however, were left with longer-term elevations of RFRP levels in the dorsomedial hypothalamus area of the brain, and suppression of activity in the reproductive axis - the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal hormone cascade - that is associated with lowered sexual activity.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/154116.php
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There certainly are instances of “illegitimate rape.” There are the women who cry rape the morning after, statutory rape as mentioned earlier, false rape claims like the Duke case, and other circumstances wherein the image of a violent, forced rape is not the truth of the matter. Perhaps “illegitimate” was the wrong word to use among people whose only definition of “illegitimate” is “fake” or “born outside of wedlock,” but the word can be used as a synonym for invalid or otherwise not generally accepted.
A more savvy politician would recognize that too many of our neighbors are painfully ignorant with pathetic English language skills but I was under the impression we wanted real people to run for office, people who haven’t been schooled in the fine art of politics. Seems I was wrong.
Oh well. I still think this Akin thing is going to fizzle out like the Fluck fiasco no matter which way it ends up.