The incident involving Todd Akin during last November's election here in the US was, at least, based on a long discarded medical opinion. Dr. Fred Mecklenburg wrote in 1972, (an assistant clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Minnesota Medical School at the time) "that pregnancy resulting from rape "is extremely rare," and cited as an example the city of Buffalo, N.Y., which had not seen "a pregnancy from confirmed rape in over 30 years." Other cities -- Chicago, Washington, St. Paul -- also had experienced lengthy spells without a rape-caused pregnancy.
The reasons were numerous: Not all rapes result in "a completed act of intercourse," Mecklenburg wrote. He added that it was "improbable" that a rape would occur "on the 1-2 days of the month in which the woman would be fertile."
Mecklenburg's third reason seems to have been picked up by Akin, A woman exposed to the trauma of rape, Mecklenburg wrote, "will not ovulate even if she is 'scheduled' to."
But a host of other research disputes Mecklenburg's conclusions, both on the scarcity of pregnancy following rape and natural defenses to prevent conception.
"From a scientific standpoint, what's legitimate and fair to say is that a woman who is raped has the same chances of getting pregnant as a woman who engaged in consensual intercourse during the same time in her menstrual cycle," said Dr. Barbara Levy, vice president for health policy at the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists...