Gingrey (left) said Democrats held the Senate majority in part due to Akin’s comments. | AP Photos Gingrey: Akin 'partly right' on rape

Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) said former Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) is “partly right” regarding Akin’s remarks — which were proven untrue by doctors — about women being able to prevent pregnancy if they are raped.

Speaking at a suburban-Atlanta Chamber of Commerce breakfast, Gingrey also said he has been an OB-GYN since 1975 and tells infertile couples “all the time” to just “relax” in order to conceive, according to The Marietta Daily Journal.


( PHOTOS: 5 controversial Todd Akin quotes)

“[In] Missouri, Todd Akin … was asked by a local news source about rape and he said, ‘Look, in a legitimate rape situation’ — and what he meant by legitimate rape was just look, someone can say, ‘I was raped’: A scared-to-death 15-year-old that becomes impregnated by her boyfriend and then has to tell her parents, that’s pretty tough and might on some occasion say, ‘Hey, I was raped.’ That’s what he meant when he said legitimate rape versus nonlegitimate rape,” Gingrey said.

Gingrey, a co-chair of the GOP Doctors Caucus, continued: “I don’t find anything so horrible about that. But then he went on and said that in a situation of rape, of a legitimate rape, a woman’s body has a way of shutting down so the pregnancy would not occur. He’s partly right on that.”

On Friday, Gingrey’s office provided a statement in which he appeared to distance himself from the remarks, which he said were misconstrued:

“At a breakfast yesterday morning, I was asked why Democrats made abortion a central theme of the presidential campaign. I do not defend, nor do I stand by, the remarks made by Rep. Akin and Mr. [Richard] Mourdock. In my attempt to provide context as to what I presumed they meant, my position was misconstrued,” he said in the statement.

Mourdock, the GOP candidate who lost the race for the Indiana Senate seat, suggested in October that pregnancies from rape are God’s will. In August, Akin told a local TV station that women who are raped rarely get pregnant because their bodies can shut it down. Akin went on to lose to Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” Akin said at the time.

Gingrey noted he is an OB-GYN, then discussed what he tells infertile couples.

“And I’ve delivered lots of babies, and I know about these things. It is true. We tell infertile couples all the time that are having trouble conceiving because of the woman not ovulating, ‘Just relax. Drink a glass of wine. And don’t be so tense and uptight because all that adrenaline can cause you not to ovulate,’” Gingrey said, according to the paper.

He continued: “So he was partially right wasn’t he? But the fact that a woman may have already ovulated 12 hours before she is raped, you’re not going to prevent a pregnancy there by a woman’s body shutting anything down because the horse has already left the barn, so to speak.”

He then criticized the media and even 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney for their handling of Akin’s remarks.

“And yet the media took that and tore it apart. Mitt Romney also didn’t help much. Todd Akin is a good man. I’m not standing up here defending people saying stupid things,” he said at the event.

Gingrey also said the Democrats took the Senate majority in part due to Mourdock’s and Akin’s comments.

“Part of the reason the Dems still control the Senate is because of comments made in Missouri by Todd Akin and Indiana by Mourdock were considered a little bit over the top,” Gingrey said, according to The Daily Journal. “Mourdock basically said, ‘Look, if there is conception in the aftermath of a rape, that’s still a child, and it’s a child of God, essentially.’ Now, in Indiana, that cost him the election.”