| Aug. 21st, 2012 @ 12:19 pm On Rep. Akins |
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My inner cynic is at the fore about this. The man bumbles and lets his mouth run ahead of his brain, makes a bad soundbite, and so he should be destroyed? Leftists have played this game for far too long for me to take anything at face value.
Let's do something nobody else is--- RESEARCH.
Warm up your googles....
yes, pregnancies due to rape are vanishingly rare, thank God. Some statistics report that conception as a result of rape occurs in less than one percent of cases, while other
studies indicate higher figures such as 4.7%.
"Finally, factor in what is certainly one of the most important reasons why a rape victim rarely gets pregnant, and that's physical trauma. Every woman is aware that stress and emotional factors can alter her menstrual cycle. To get and stay pregnant a woman's body must produce a very sophisticated mix of hormones. Hormone production is controlled by a part of the brain that is easily influenced by emotions. There's no greater emotional trauma that can be experienced by a woman than an assault rape. This can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy...."
Further casual browsing shows that yes, pregnancy as a result of rape is, thankfully, statistically minimal, and largely due to the woman's own body reacting and rejecting the pregnancy. Of course, you have to sift through a lot of shrill feminist dogma to get at the actual numbers--- even the most militant will only claim that 5% of rapes will result in a pregnancy.
In other words-- he was RIGHT.
So you basically think we should run the man out on a rail.... for telling the truth.
I think the hissing reactionaries are more angry that he went on and said what most of us think: that, even in the statistically rare case of pregnancy resulting from a rape, that it would be wrong to murder the baby for the crime that the rapist committed.
Me? I'm more disappointed in the limp little republicans who want to throw him to the she-wolves in the delusionary hopes of winning their favor. Democrats at least get that much right--- they defend their own. So-called conservatives, on the other hand, shoot their wounded. |
rhjunior
Does that mean we can get rid of Obama for saying he's been to all 57 states?
True or not, he's torpedoed his campaign, and to stay in hands the seat to the Democrats. Elections run on sound bites and short term memory; unfortunately he's handed a great sound bite to the Democrats right before the election and you can bet they will make as much use of it as they can.
Let's go ahead and take that low figure you pointed out first: 1% of rapes resulting in pregnancy.
Now, from the statistics I can find, the average time between marriage and the first child is 15-16 months. Assuming the reported average of intimacy among married couples of 2 times a week, that would indicate that somewhere around .75% of sexual encounters among married couples result in pregnancy.
Now, of course there are a lot of factors involved, and a lot of variables that are hard to account for, such as for how long a couple is actively "trying" for a child.
Of course, with something like 90% of women in the US using the pill/IUD, the chances of a woman being raped while both not on the pill/IUD, AND during that brief window in which she can get pregnant would tend to indicate that, all things being equal, fewer than 1/4 of a % of rapes should result in pregnancy.
So, I'm certainly not ready to agree that women possess some sort of innate biological countermeasures that can instantly detect the difference between an intended and unintended pregnancy.
Note, the claim is not that it absolutely prevents pregnancy, but that it acts to prevent pregnancy. It's multiple biological factors, as well, not just one.
Akins is a victim of "gotcha" yellow journalism--- forced to compress an issue with a great deal of complicated details into a brief soundbite.
"Pregnancy in cases of rape" is used as a bludgeon by pro-abortionists, who deliberately obscure pertinent details.... like the fact that they are using an extreme circumstance as a justification for an all-encompassing policy; that pregnancies resulting from rape are RARE; and most absolutely they are obscuring the fact that you're still killing an innocent baby for the rapist's crime.
There's also the parallel issue of the definition of rape being perverted.
"Morning after regrets" are now considered sufficient grounds for crying rape. A woman who gets drunk and fornicates with someone can accuse her partner of rape, solely on the ground that she got herself drunk. A seventeen and a half year old woman can bang an eighteen year old man and cry "statutory" rape.Even a woman who changes her mind in the middle of sex can cry rape. Women are no longer legally held responsible for their own sexual behavior, and can cry rape all day and all night without paying a single legal penalty or spending a single second in jail for libel, slander or perjury. That's ANOTHER reason why people are unwilling to give them the legal privilege of abortion "in cases of rape."
Now, imagine you now have a microphone under your nose and one second to compress all of the issues listed above into a single coherent paragraph. ThreeTwoOneGO!
It didn't work....they were still vehemently opposed to any restrictions whatsoever.
They don't like that one, either. It's either all abortion, all the time, for any reason, or--- well, there is no other option as far as they're concerned.
Gotcha Jounalism
Re: Gotcha Jounalism
Note, the claim is not that it absolutely prevents pregnancy, but that it acts to prevent pregnancy.
The numbers just don't bare that out though.
If you lined up 100 women, and pointed to one at random, the chances of you selecting a women that wasn't on birth control and was currently in her "fertility window" would be equal to most of the reported rates of pregnancy resulting from rape. Which is, frankly, what one would expect. If the female body really did take an active role is resisting such a pregnancy, then one would expect those numbers to be significantly different. But they're not.
I'm also hesitant to accept that life begins at conception, if for no other reason than because that would mean that every sexually active woman taking the pill has committed countless "abortions".
The pill does not prevent conception; merely implantation. Therefore, any woman who is both on the pill and having sex (to include married women) is "committing murder" every time she has her period, since there is every reason to believe that ova was fertilized by her partner.
I'd like to see how willing the "life at conception" crowd would be to announce THAT as part of their argument.
Furthermore, the term "conception" is hotly debated whether it refers to fertilization or implantation.
First, note the term "fertilization". It means "to make fertile". I wonder why it wasn't called "combination", "fomentation", or "generation". Worth looking into.
Second, many of the processes of a blastocyst's formation cannot be completed until implantation occurs. A blastocyst simply cannot obtain the necessary nutrients to complete the instructions of its new genetic code without implantation.
Third, if a zygote, morula, or blastocyst dies due to lack of implantation, it's generally called a miscarriage, (even among pro-choice doctors) unless it was somehow done on purpose. It also usually occurs without the parents knowing. It's really a non-issue.
Finally, if you have no clear milestone to determine when a human being becomes a human being...
... how can you possibly justify killing anything along the possible spectrum? (And no, sperm and eggs make no sense. That IS a very clear milestone. They only have half the necessary chromosomes each, for crying out loud.)
Do you really consider birth (the geographic transportation from inside the womb to outside) a reliable milestone? Or the cutting of the umbilical (a feeding tube?)
You cannot say you were a sperm at some point in your life.
You cannot say you were an egg at some point in your life.
If you really stretch it you can try to say you were a sperm and an egg destined to eventually meet at some point in your life.
But one claim that definitely does not need stretching is that you were, at one point, the combination of both.
Think on it.
-Kire Du'Hai
Edited at 2012-08-23 01:47 am (UTC)
And, no, "birth" isn't a clear milestone, since the date of a birth can even be chosen up to a point. If it really matters to the woman, she can chose the day of her delivery. Similarly, infants born several weeks early survive. That window even grows every year as technology and knowledge advances, pushing back the earliest week at which a prematurely born child can survive reliably.
Hence that grey area regarding the legality of abortion I'd imagine.
You can either come to some sort of consensus about the window in which an abortion is okay, or you can just blanket forbid it.
The problem with the blanket forbidding is that you run the risk of incidents like the recent one in Dominican Republic in which a pregnant woman's cancer treatment was delayed because of the risk it posed to the unborn child. They delayed her treatment for three weeks, and both ended up dying anyway. So...score one for the child's best interests?
The obvious answer to those sorts of scenarios of course is to add caveats, such as allowing for abortions when the mother's life is immediately threatened. But then you run into the question of whether it's okay to kill one innocent to save another. Which is a whole other philosophical discussion.
Frankly, personally? I'd leave it up to the mother. She's the one who's pregnant. She's the one who has to go through everything. What right to I have to metaphorically chain her down and dictate what happens to her body?
Should abortions be encouraged? Of course not. The more people, the merrier. Every effort should be made to encourage her to see it through. But I'm not about to send someone to death row for committing premeditated homicide for deciding what happens to their body.
From a moral one, it really isn't as complicated, though.
Okay, look at it this way: a woman's body is her territory, right? It's her property. With that in mind, consider this:
If someone broke into your house (property) and deposited a newborn child there, is it okay to leave it up to you whether the child lives or dies? I mean, it's your house. You're not about to send someone to death row for committing premeditated homicide for throwing the baby in the trash of your own house. Or letting the child starve to death, just because you didn't want to have to deal with it for the amount of time it would take to find a caretaker.
Homicide is homicide. If you're going to allow women to kill babies just because they reside in their bodies (usually due to invitation or carelessness, not rape, I might add), then you might as well allow them to kill anyone in their home.
And if you can't tell if it's a baby you're killing... it's rather like stabbing a cardboard box labeled 'may contain baby'.
So if you think its perfectly okay for individuals to decide who lives and dies in their own home (after all, what right do you have to metaphorically chain them down and dictate what happens in their home?), and that it's okay to stab a 'may contain baby' box (which does, interestingly enough, bleed) full of holes...
Then sure. Abortion is A-okay. Totally the woman's choice.
In the case of mothers endangerment, it's a choice between two lives. And since the baby is dependent on the mother, you may kill both by trying to save the baby. But not always. Children are generally considered to take precedence in saving over mothers (the mothers usually insist on it). It's not really a caveat; you're not choosing to kill the baby. You're choosing who to save. A difficult choice, to be sure, especially if it's uncertain who would survive, but not one that needs a "caveat" to allow abortion in specific cases.
-Kire Du'Hai
If you can't tell me when that clump of cells (which, by the way, is exactly what you are right now...) becomes a human being, then how is it okay to kill it at any point in its existence?
And if you can't, how can you possibly justify putting it at unnecessary risk? Even if it's just a matter of "You MIGHT be killing a baby. We're not sure exactly when this clump of tissue becomes a baby. We're pretty sure it happens at some point after fertilization - that's it. But if you want to kill it, knowing that it MIGHT be a baby... that's totally your choice."
Might as well make all murder legal. After all - can you PROVE you're a human being? What's the difference between you, a clump of cells, and a zygote, also a clump of cells? You're bigger?
Midgets are in trouble. We're coming for them next.
-Kire Du'Hai
After all, we don't consider it "murder" when we're harvesting the organs of a person who has died, even though they are often hooked up to machines that keep the body breathing and the blood flowing (pulse and respirations).
It's still a terrible risk, though. It's not something you can be sure of. After all, the brain activity only develops as the result of the combined genetic instructions resulting from germ fusion.
While I'm willing to compromise there if necessary, the question does present itself:
What real reason is there for abortion?
As I said, 'abortion' for the mother's health isn't abortion at all. It's choosing who to save.
So, what then? Convenience? Peace of mind? Freedom from consequences?
Those seem like extremely appalling reasons for taking actions that you can't be certain aren't killing a human being and denying them their rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
-Kire Du'Hai
Given the uncertainty, hadn't we best err on the side of caution, rather than rushing in? Since when is such a final course of action JUSTIFIED rather than CONTRAINDICATED by uncertainty?
The thing is, at the uniting of the ovum and the successful sperm there comes into being a genetically unique (setting aside the occasional calving of the fertilized ovum into identical twins/triplets, etc.) example of homo sapiens sapiens (Isn't it the height of hubris to say we're the wise wise men? But I digress :-) ). That's about the only scientifically determinable distinction. Much of anything else along the way to being squoze out the cervix and down the chute (and right on out into at least young adulthood, truth to tell) amounts to differences merely of degree, not of kind.
The problem with citing anecdotes in favor of a position is that someone's bound to come up with a counter-anecdote or two. The two that spring readily to mind to this author are the case of the woman with tuberculosis-caused lesions in her lungs who was advised to abort because her lungs were in such bad shape that she couldn't possibly survive to term. She demurred, and the pressure on her chest cavity from the growth of the baby wedged her damaged lungs together long enough for enough scar tissue to form across the lesions to keep her lungs from further damage. She survived pretty much because of the pregnancy. (I gotta find the reference for that one, 'cause it's such a good story).
The other counteranecdote that would naturally occur to me given where I am is that of the missionary in the Phillipines who doctors advised to abort because she was too ill to support a pregnancy. Had she followed the doctor's advice and aborted the obviously unsustainable pregnancy, the 2007 Heisman Trophy would've gone to someone else, as Tim Tebow would not have been born.
His point was that there's an equilibrium; for every story on one side of the argument, there's another story on the other side.
Meaning, essentially, that such stories are pointless.
When it comes to issues like this, which are purely ethical questions, you can't approach it experientially. They're based purely on belief. As such, it can only be approached philosophically.
If your philosophy dictates that abortion be a woman's choice, make sure it doesn't conflict with any other basic ethical beliefs you have, or you've got problems. Things like being against murder.
Since, to my knowledge, there is no direct scriptural reference to abortion (though a little bit of indirect), my only real reason for being so adamantly pro-life is because it's a logically consistent philosophy.
If you believe human life to be sacred and that it should be protected, then the only logical belief is to be pro-life. Because right to liberty does not trump right to life. And if you don't know when you become 'alive', then you can't take chances.
I have yet to see any pro-choice argument that reconciles itself with a belief in the sanctity of life yet. They have all been inconsistent.
-Kire Du'Hai
The topic of abortion came up at church one day some years back. A friend of mine got up and shared something. She'd been listening to one of those talk-radio programs over a period of several days where social and family type issues were discussed. A few days previous the program had been on adoption; the host of the program had said on-air that he was adopted. Later, the topic of abortion came up. The host said that he was in favor of the "rape-or-incest" exception in any legislation restricting abortions. My friend called and got through. As she related it, the dialog went thusly:
My friend: You're in favor abortion in the case of rape or incest?
Host: Yes.
My friend: You're adopted, aren't you?
Host: Yes...
My friend: How do you know *you're* not the result of rape or incest?
Host: (*long silence*)
...or she wouldn't have been born at all.
However, the hormones generated in a woman's body when she is under stress lower her fertility. In fact, one of the big problems with infertility is that the woman becomes stressed due to her inability to get pregnant, which continues to keep her from getting pregnant even when the infertility issue itself is addressed.
This is the way I put it. Say a woman has a near miss on the highway. Came within inches of getting into a horrendous, probably fatal accident. She pulls into the driveway and she is white and shaky. Her husband holds her, feeds her a nice little dinner, gives her a massage, and it turns into 'something more'.
She has the exact same lowered likelihood of getting pregnant as if she was raped.
Doctors used to think that women only get pregnant when they want... Then they believed that women could not affect their own fertility at all... Now, they know that stress affects fertility, but they haven't locked down all the particulars of why. We *do* know that stress hormones require progesterone to create (using up a hormone that needs to be strong enough in the body for ovulation to happen and pregnancy to be sustained), and that in times of stress, the body (male or female) lowers its production of sex hormones (progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone).
Any woman will tell you that stress affects the cycle. A nasty 24-hr stomach bug or finals week can put off her period for days to weeks. Some stressful situations (my highschool graduation, for example) will cause her to skip a cycle altogether. Now if she's already ovulated, tough luck, she's on a 14-day countdown no matter what. But if she hasn't ovulated yet, stress will delay it.
Sufficient longer-term stress will shut it down completely. Female soldiers often report dysmenorrhea while they are on active duty.
Supposedly a woman's chances of getting pregnant are 5% off her ovulation week and 25% on her ovulation week. 5% * 75% + 25% * 25% give us roughly a 10% chance of pregnancy on any random sex act. When a couple has made sure to have sex within a couple of days of ovulation, their chances of pregnancy is 25%.
Given that, isn't 1-5% rather low for pregnancy from rape? You'd have to assume that either a rapist *never* picks a woman during her fertility window (which kind of eliminates all men who acquaintance-rape instead of pulling women off the street looking for power), or that women do indeed have a way of lowering their fertility when under stress.
Rapist: "Me want woman."
Victim: "You cannot have!"
Rapist: "YES ME CAN!"
That's a power play no matter how you cut it. Regular assault is a power play.
Even if you take away everything else, it's still about power. If it were all about sexual impulse, they'd find other means to satisfy it.
If you look at sexual behavior in animals, you can see it used to assert dominance quite often. And rapists *do* have a lot in common with animals - they're letting animalistic urges rule their actions.
Rape first assaults (to be successfully assaulted reduces your overall feeling of security in the first place), and then follows with humiliation by essentially what is a claim of ownership. The rapist does the biological equivalent of making a deposit (whether successful or not) that is SUPPOSED to tie two people into one flesh to raise a child as a permanent partnership. This induces the feeling that there is no escape from the rapist.
As much as I'm sure sexual impulse is the initiator of the drive to rape, I think it takes more than that to actually act it out.
-Kire Du'Hai
What, then, are they in it for? To get off? Then explain why they choose rape instead of something else. It's not as if pornography and prostitutes are in short supply in the world.
If being horny were all it took to motivate rape, 99.99% of men in the world would be rapists.
-Kire Du'Hai
Horny man + real self control = Not horny man.
I'm saying self-control isn't just an ability you either have or don't. It's something you choose to have or don't. And you need a reason to not choose it. Especially when you don't even have to choose self-control, like a decent person - you could indulge in some other depravity that doesn't incur the wrath of law enforcement.
I'm saying that "horny" is not sufficient to motivate someone to rape. It takes more than that. The idea that it doesn't implies even more lack of self control in men.
-Kire Du'Hai
Edited at 2012-08-28 07:24 am (UTC)
I think it's about people who's sex drive has been corrupted with a lust for power and control over others - perhaps even the violation of others.
Ah, no, as anyone with a unplanned "tent" could tell you. Being horny is not under one's control. What one does about it is.
This is recursive. Self control is about what choices you make, so saying that "It's something you choose to have or don't" is just a truism. No matter how many levels you add, at the end, did you have the self control to make the right choice. And your example doesn't help your argument. We have many laws for the express purpose of helping people with their self control. The wrath of law enforcement only modifies the behavior of people with self control, as we have seen with "Three Strikes and your're Out!". There are people in prison for life for stealing a can of beer, for example.
Why would you say that? "Rape" (sex without consent) is the normal order of things. How can an animal consent? That's only an issue for thinking creatures, which would seem to be just us at the moment. But thinking, self control, is a habit, and a hard one. Why should we be surprised that some men and women regress to the animal state we all come from?
You've missed my point by miles.
-Kire Du'Hai
the myth that rape was about "men subjugating women" was invented by militant feminists-- who frankly see everything as being about "men subjugating women." You can't order a pizza without some feminist "thinker" with a sidewalk-puddle intellect finding a "men subjugating women" issue in it. Feminists have come out openly stating that ALL sex was about men asserting their dominance over women.
Their perspective is flawed. Why? Because they are reasoning about why a rapist does things from a woman's perspective.
Subtle and unacknowledged truth: Men use power to get sex. Women use sex to gain power.
Historically, traditionally, biologically, women use sex to gain power--- to try and keep a man hooked to her, to punish a man who upsets her, to move up in the social hierarchy, to separate a man from his money. Why? Because for a woman, sex comes with a hell of a lot more potential complications, aka pregnancy and childbirth. It is incomprehensible to her on a visceral level that anyone would pursue sex entirely as its own end.
Even 21st century, unattached promiscuous women think this way--- pill or no pill, the common question among young adolescent women is "should I use sex to keep him from leaving me?"
The male, on the other hand, is thinking the exact opposite: "Should I stay with her to keep getting sex?"
If rapists were out looking for a woman to subjugate, they'd pay a whore to play a submissive for them. They go out and rape because they want sex and don't think that anything like "morals" or "decency" or even "lack of money" should stand in their way.
But a woman sees this, and tries to put herself in the rapist's shoes. And fails.
And to a lesser extent, the average decent man does the same. Raised on a steady diet of feminist thinking, he reinterprets the world and his own common sense through the distorted lens of feminist thinking.
However, my main experience with such matters has little to do with feminism.
I worked at a prison. There were no women. Rape happened. Usually perpetrated by those who thought of themselves as straight.
Hear enough lines of "You my (femdog), now!" and you get a very clear picture that it was about dominance.
However, even I admit that while that sort of thing happens regularly, it's an occasional extreme - not the norm.
The main point I was trying to get across was that it's a power trip either way. Like you said, "Men use power to get sex. Women use sex to gain power." After all, "They go out and rape because they want sex and don't think that anything like "morals" or "decency" or even "lack of money" should stand in their way."
Those are both power trips. Men and women both express power through sex. Women, usually like a leash. Men, usually like the breaking of a leash. Roles are occasionally reversed.
Overall, I just think the issue is simply more complicated than either just sex or just power. It's a mix of sex, power, and immorality - and probably other factors unseen.
-Kire Du'Hai
I knew something smelled fishy.
Yes, he said "legitimate" when it probably would have been better to say "genuine". Probably because crying "rape" is unfortunately a tactic of many unscrupulous women and has been for eons, and has gotten even worse in our victocracy.
Unfortunately, instead of examining what he actually meant, people hear someone say the words "legitimate rape" and assume the speaker believes rape can be a legitimate act - rather than a legitimate claim.
Politically, I do have to admit it's probably too late to do anything but throw him to the wolves, now... but that doesn't change the fact that it's not right or fair, and reduces further intelligent dialogue on the subject.
It's lose-lose now. Just like the Dems like it.
-Kire Du'Hai
Rape is a horrible violent crime. If you don't like people having to qualify it with terms like "legitimate", then you should stop the feminists from adding stupidity by claiming that consensual sex is rape when regretted later or, in some cases, that all heterosexual sex is 'rape' because 'it's always man's way of exercising dominance over a woman'.
While you're at it, try recommending that women don't go out to bars wearing next to nothing and get drunk with the intent of 'getting some'. It's a lot easier to define rape as a horrible violent crime if it means "He dragged me into the bushes and tore off my clothing" instead of "I thought I was having sex with a guy I met at the bar, but I woke up next to his ugly friend instead."
Rape is certainly a horrible violent crime. But it's the people who cheapen sex who turn the claim into a joke, not the one guy who tries to make sure you know that he's not talking about 'sex you later regret' when describing a physiological reaction that only occurs during an actual horrible violent crime.
If you include date rape in your rape statistics, then the number of pregnancies from rape goes waaay up due to the fact that women "in heat" are much more likely to seek out or are at least receptive to sex (such as on a date) than at other times of the month. Studies of female sexuality have confirmed this unconscious/subconscious behavior by women. And, no, I can't provide a link to the study because I saw that on TV about 2 decades ago on a PBS special on "sex and the brain".