Do some anti-abortion advocates really believe women can't get pregnant from rape? Turns out, they do.
Idaho Senator Chuck Winder has caused a bit of a scandal with this bizarre comment: "I would hope that when a woman goes into a physician, with a rape issue, that that physician will indeed ask her about perhaps her marriage, was this pregnancy caused by normal relations in a marriage, or was it truly caused by a rape." Winder didn't explicitly say that rape can't cause pregnancy — but some other people have.
Idaho Sen. Chuck Winder.
(AP / John Miller)
1. Weather analogies
Federal Judge James Leon Holmes, a Bush appointee, said in an article published circa 1997: “Concern for rape victims is a red herring because conceptions from rape occur with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami.”
2. "Hormonal response"
From the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, 2006, via Democratic Underground:
"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.
"So if they do get pregnant, they wanted it, is that it?" a reproductive-rights advocate in the audience asked.
