'Rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency,' concluded a 1990s study. Docs: Akin pregnancy claim bogus

The medical community on Monday debunked Rep. Todd Akin’s claim that women who are raped are less likely to become pregnant, with a prominent physician dismissing it as “bogus” and two academic studies contradicting the Missouri Republican’s comments.

“Rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency,” concluded the authors of a 1990s study that found one out of every 20 rapes results in pregnancy, for a total of more than 32,000 rape-pregnancies each year in the United States. A separate 2003 article in the journal Human Nature estimated that rapes are twice as likely to result in pregnancies as consensual sex.


“The short answer: There’s no basis to what he’s saying,” Jonathan Gottschall, a professor at Washington and Jefferson College who co-wrote the 2003 Human Nature article with his wife, wrote to POLITICO in an e-mail. “If anything, the evidence is the opposite: Rape victims have a higher likelihood of conceiving, per-incident of intercourse.”

“It’s just bogus,” Nancy Snyderman, a medical doctor who serves as NBC News’s medical editor, said Monday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports.” “It’s not written anywhere. It’s not taught anywhere.”

Snyderman said the chances of getting pregnant from rape and getting pregnant from unprotected sex are the same — 5 percent.

Akin, who is running against incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), was forced to apologize Sunday after suggesting in a local television interview that women have biological defenses against getting pregnant if they are raped.

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” Akin said in an interview taped Friday.

But research doesn’t back up Akin’s comments.

The Gottschalls’ article looked at the National Violence Against Women survey, which polled 8,000 women. Of the 405 rape victims in the poll who fit the studies’ methodology, about 6.4 percent of them became pregnant. The Gottschalls think the best studies show consensual sex resulting in pregnancies about 3 percent of the time. Why the gap?

“It’s almost certainly because of the women rapists target,” Gottschall explained in a follow-up interview, explaining that rapists are more likely to target young, fertile women.

But Gottschall did warn that methodological problems mean the numbers “aren’t carved in a stone.” Previous studies have shown anywhere from 1 percent to 10 percent of rapes result in pregnancy.

The 1996 study, conducted by researchers at the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center at the Medical University of South Carolina, looked at 4,008 women over a 3-year period. The Centers for Disease Control cites their study on its website.

Akin opposes abortion rights even in the case of rape, and offered the theory as a defense of his position.

“In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it’s clear that I misspoke in this interview and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year,” he said in a statement Sunday.