Huckabee unleashes on GOP Establishment - Could he go rogue at RNC?

[anvi]

Btw, back in 1998, there was a similar "rapes don't result in pregnancies" controversy in Arkansas, and Huckabee defended the guy (Fay Boozman, brother of the current US Senator), and gave him a job.  Not just gave the guy a job, but put him charge of the state's Department of Health(!):

Wow.  Just, you know, wow.

[anvi]

Yeah, I think at least one of the many takeaways from the last two election cycles is that runaway nutter candidates should not be permitted by the party to run for the Senate.  Not that runaway nutter candidates are ever any good, but still...

[anvi]

As I understand it, to his credit, Akin has claimed that he has "checked the facts" about his original assertion, which he claimed came from medical experts, that pregnancies resulting from rape are rare because of supposed female bodily defenses, and he has found out that is not true.  Whether a woman gets pregnant from any act of intercourse depends primarily on her ovulation cycle, and so the probability of her becoming pregnant as a result of rape largely tracks with that.  As for the so-called "defenses," there really aren't any; any woman's fertility might be effected by a considerable number of factors, but being raped isn't one of them.  

I don't have much of a dog in this one--whether Akin wants to stay in is his decision, whether the GOP wants to continue to fund his candidacy is their decision, and who the voters of Missouri choose to represent them in the Senate will in the end be their decision.  But, IMO, I think the initial comments by Akin were just too far beyond the pale for him to recover in the race, so, I think, if the GOP wants to have a shot at McCaskill's Senate seat, they should back someone else, and Huckabee, as has been stated above, should pick his bone with the GOP establishment in a more substantive context.  

[anvi]

Actually, science isn't so sure about that. The science is clear that the chance of conception is not equal in all cases. For instance, females whom orgasm at/after ejaculation are more likely to conceive because the cervix mechanically pulls semen into the uterus. Since that doesn't happen during rape, the odds of conceiving during rape are slightly lower. About half of rapists don't ejaculate. Science is studying the amount of backwash [the size of the "wet spot"] to see if there is a form of mating selection occurring. Medical science is showing a relationship between stress and reduced fertility. Anti-ovulation drugs given to rape victims further lower the odds.

Science is clear that chances of conception are not equal in all cases across the board.  The relationship researches have uncovered between stress and reduced fertility link chronic stress, and not the acute stress of rape, to decreases in fertility.  Anti-ovulation drugs will lower the odds that anyone would conceive, and the fact that they are given to rape victims itself demonstrates that rape victims can become pregnant--otherwise giving them the drugs would not be necessary.  Papers in academic journals have estimated that over 30,000 women become pregnant as a result of rape every year--so however "rare" the occurrence may be, it isn't nearly rare enough.  But now you appear to be defending assertions that Akin himself has abandoned, so I'm not sure where this is going.

[anvi]

There are certainly widely variant estimates of annual rates of pregnancies occurring as a result of rape.  The authors of the paper in question think that large numbers of rapes go unreported every year because many of the victims are underaged, and the Department of Justice even in 1996 submitted reports that only one-third of incidents of rape were reported. Even then, the total numbers those particular authors suggest are probably inflated  All I know for certain is that it happens far too often, and for Akin to have brought up the issue by making distinctions between "legitimate rape" and whatever other kinds of rape their are supposed to be makes it, it seems to me, very difficult at best to assuage the perception of the voters that Akin is not particularly sensitive to women who have been victimized.