Note: Some material in this post may considered “mature”.

Christianity, especially in America, has become a vast array of contradictions. Talk to any two different people who call themselves “Christian”, and you’re likely to get two different, often conflicting, ideas of what that means. So then what does it mean to be relgious, to believe in God? God certainly isn’t a theory, as a theory needs evidence for support. A hypothesis is an idea that begs experimentation, but God can hardly even be that. I can’t put it any better than Twitter’s @MrOzAtheist, who writes that God is, “a wild stab in the dark dreamt up by people who didn’t yet know how to rationally investigate anything.” And while it’s true that the God idea falls apart on any level when examined by science (a worthwhile practice, by the way), it doesn’t even need science to fall apart on its own terms. Whenever I come across one of these arguments from within, I’ll write about it here.

The first is inspired by Todd Akin’s infamous comments about “legitimate rape” from about a year ago. Before I begin, I’m just going to make you aware of some assumptions I’ll be making about “Pro-life” people (scare quotes because people who call themselves “pro-life” are usually also pro-death penalty.)

Pro-lifers are religious. Pro-lifers are pro-life because of their religion. This is not to say that they get their feelings on abortion from a particular verse in the Bible, but rather that they feel their morality comes from their religion, and therefore they feel their god is pro-life. Whatever their views on evolution, religious people (maybe not all pro-lifers, though) think their god has something to do with there being life on Earth. Whether that means he just planted the first microscopic replicating cell, or he single-handedly molds every facet of every life on Earth, or anything in between. Their god, then, is the creator of all “natural” laws.

To refresh, in speaking about whether he thought women who had been raped should be able to legally abort a pregnancy that came about because of the rape, Todd Akin famously replied, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” While this comment was rightfully the target of vitriol from many (and he later said he mispoke), he is not the only public representative to make the statement that women who are raped cannot get pregnant. Buzzfeed picked up several misconceptions about this. Three on the list of six are government officials. Here’s one gem, from North Carolina representative Henry Aldridge in 1995: “The facts show that people who are raped, who are truly raped, the juices don’t flow, the body functions don’t work, and they don’t get pregnant.” I don’t know if this is the majority opinion of conservative Christians, or any faithful, or not, but I certainly hope not. Even ignoring the questionable science at play, is there really a difference between rape, “true” rape, and “legitimate” rape? It is at least a prevalent enough belief to have been publicly announced several times throughout the years, usually, if not always, by religious pro-lifers. Because it’s safe to say that people have believed this for a good amount of time, I think it’s also safe to say that while the majority of pro-lifers may not believe this, a significant portion of them do.

In any case, these, and other, comments were made in an attempt to explain why even women who have been raped should not be allowed to legally abort their resulting pregnancies. Putting aside the ignorance of statements like this, let’s examine this idea. The idea that women who have been raped have some kind of bodily reaction that won’t allow them to get pregnant.

I think this idea most likely refers to The Bruce Effect, which finds that certain rodents, when mating with a new mate, have an increased tendency towards miscarriage. This has also been suggested to happen in certain mammals, though never confirmed. While no one has suggested this may happen in humans (at least not that I know of), let’s pretend it does, and therefore Todd Akin and Henry Aldridge and others are right. (Note: I want to point out my vehement rejection to this idea as proposed by these public figures. I am in no way suggesting that, even if they were right, this is a legitimate argument for those who wish to ban abortion.)

It’s not agreed upon how evolution has favored this process. Maybe to keep the male mice monogamous since a large portion of their offspring will die if they don’t stay with one mate, which has benefits for both males and females. However, this process evolved for some reason, even if no one’s really sure why. So by claiming rape victims are unable to get pregnant, these public figures are announcing their acceptance of evolution, right?

My guess is probably not.

So then what is it? Did God, whatever his role in the existence of life on Earth, somehow “create” or “design” the Bruce Effect, either the actual effect itself or the building blocks for it? Unless you’re a theist that also accepts evolution, your answer would have to be “yes”. So then the question is, how can you claim that God, and therefore you, is pro-life, but also claim that he created a natural abortion process for women? Will you throw the devil into the equation? So the devil created this process, and you’re touting it as a reason to why abortion should be banned? Not very Christian of you.

In so many ways, this idea defeats itself when looked at from a religious perspective. How can a god who creates a process that naturally aborts an “unborn child”, also be “pro-life”? If God didn’t create the process, then who did? The Devil? Then saying, “Don’t get an abortion because the devil will do it for you,” is a bit six-of-one-half-dozen-of-the-other, don’t you think? Was it created by Natural Selection? Watch it! That’s a slippery slope to unbelief, and we wouldn’t want to go there, would we?