Ugh, I need to just write up a good response to this and copy/paste it to every one of these posts. I learned in high school back in the 1970s that rape rarely leads to pregnancy (in fact, we were told that it just doesn't happen). Why, all of a sudden, is a fact that was known in the 1970s bogus just because a conservative politician stated it?
1) Half of all fertilized ova do not implant even under favorable conditions. Because of the stress and physical injury associated with rape, conditions are NOT favorable for implantation.
2) From 50 to 75% of implanted ova die before the woman even suspects she is pregnant. The stress of rape increases that number.
3) There is also an increased risk of miscarriage of confirmed pregnancies.
Although Akin clearly does not have scientific training and therefore couldn't express what he meant clearly or explain the mechanisms behind it, he was factually correct. A woman DOES have a very low chance of becoming pregnant after rape, a chance which is decreased to almost non-existent if she uses the "morning-after" pill that is routinely offered to rape victims.
His intent was not to insult rape victims--while I cannot know what he was thinking, it is possible that he had in mind the deception used to get abortion legalized in the first place (hint: Norma McCorvey aka Jane Roe falsely claimed to be pregnant from rape, not from consensual sex).
BTW, the article referenced above may be based on a mouse study (because we can do research on rodents that we could never do on people, and mice share many physiological traits with humans). But consider this quote from a human study: 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. In plain English, these researchers showed that ovulation is likely to take place immediately after rape (LH=leutinizing hormone, which the body uses to signal an ovum to ripen and exit from the ovary), but that implantation is highly unlikely because the uterus is not ready.
Obviously, some women who are raped get pregnant ... unless you believe every one of them is a liar. What he said re-victimizes real or “legitimate”, if you will, rape victims. Even if he is correct factually, that it is significantly less likely, which I am not at all convinced, why kick victims when they’re down? The women who get abortions will not be stigmatized by this disinformation, but rather raped women who decided to keep these babies.
Also, take a look at the quote from the link you provided:
“It is known that the percentage of pregnancies resulting from single episodes of forced penile-vaginal intercourse (rape) is significantly higher (8.0% in a sample of 405 women from a national random-digit dialing sample of households in USA) than the percentage of pregnancies resulting from single episodes of consensual, unprotected intercourse (3.1% in a sample of 221 women with no fertility problems planning to become pregnant in USA)”