Todd Akin is an idiot, but not for the reason you think

Well, folks, this one has been percolating around in my brain since the Todd Akin flap began, but with all the upheaval surrounding changing jobs, I haven't had time to post.

When Todd Akin said that in cases of "legitimate" rape, the woman's body has ways of "shutting things down" to prevent conception, he was actually right.  I'm not sure how much knowledge base he has about this.  Probably he heard something once and filed it away, and when confronted with this question, his brain dug up that little tidbit, and he spit it out in a most unfortunate way.  Thus we gain more proof for the adage that nothing is more dangerous than a little knowledge.

The Catholic Church is regularly mocked and excoriated for promoting Natural Family Planning in its many forms.  This is NOT, I repeat, NOT the rhythm method, and one of the quickest ways to get my hair on fire is to equate the two.  The several methods of Natural Family Planning that are out there (Creighton, Billings or sympto-thermal, and the newer Marquette Method) are all thoroughly scientific, based on biology and the study of each individual woman's cycle.  Rhythm was a calendar-based method that assumed all women's bodies worked exactly the same and had cycles that all behaved identically.  It's no wonder that the most common epithet for its users became "parents."

I used the sympto-thermal method for a substantial chunk of my reproductive years, so I know whereof I speak.  With this method, a woman determines her fertility status each day by measuring her basal body temperature and evaluating her cervical mucus, whose texture changes throughout the month depending on where she is in her cycle.  A woman educated in this method and using it correctly knows exactly when ovulation is approaching, and exactly when it has occurred.  The same is true for Creighton and Marquette, just the markers read and methods of obtaining information vary.

Todd Akin would not have received so much opprobrium if more people in this country were educated about how a woman's body actually works.  Because any woman or couple that charts their fertility can tell you about times when a huge amount of stress delayed or even completely prevented ovulation for that month.  They can probably even dig up the chart and show it to you!  Illness can have the same effect.  I don't know if I could still find it, but I have a chart somewhere that shows the month I had a strep infection so severe that it took three courses of antibiotics to kill it, and I never ovulated.  My body was so sick and stressed out by that illness that it did not trust itself to support a baby!

Akin probably at some point heard someone talk about how stress can delay ovulation.  In our current society, where fertility discussions have been in the forefront of consciousness for a couple decades, it is not surprising that he might hear this somewhere.  Perhaps he has even dealt with this issue personally.  So when the question arose, his mind went into the database and found this bit of information, and he said what he said.  Here's the thing.... he wasn't wrong.  A woman who has suffered a sexual assault is likely under the greatest amount of stress in her lifetime.  I am sure many women's cycles have been disrupted by that.  That disruption would have a protective effect against pregnancy by delaying ovulation.  According to a study on PubMed from the National Institutes of Health, the rate of pregnancy from rape is five percent.  Clearly we are not dealing with the majority of rape victims when talking about this issue, and I would imagine the rate is going lower with emergency contraception being offered to rape victims in the ER as standard procedure.  (P.S.  Catholic teaching is in no way against using contraceptives in this case.  A victim has the right to defend herself against her attacker in any way she has available.  The intent of using EC is to suppress ovulation and thicken cervical mucus to block sperm from entering the uterus, which are the two primary functionalities of oral contraceptives.  In a case where a woman has not consented to sexual activity, she has the right to pursue means of preventing pregnancy.  If the unfortunate secondary effect of preventing implantation of an already-fertilized egg should take place, the principle of double-effect applies.)  Any woman that finds herself pregnant from rape deserves compassion and guidance, and nothing Todd Akin said or did denied that reality.

The other point on which he has been attacked regards his use of the terminology "legitimate rape."  For all the people upset by that, oh please, get over yourselves.  There are plenty of cases that feminist advocates and irresponsible women want to call rape that are not.  Getting drunk and making stupid choices, then regretting it the next day, is NOT rape.  Consenting to sex and then changing your mind in the middle of it is NOT rape.  This is rape:  a man who knows that you do not want to have sex forcing himself on you.  I seriously cannot believe that in the post-Duke lacrosse age, anyone would object to distinguishing legitimate rapes from illegitimate claims of rape.

So now that I have spent several paragraphs defending him, why do I still think Todd Akin is an idiot?  I have two reasons.  First, if you are going to be a politician on the national level in the United States of America, you had better have your answers straight and ready to go on the issue of abortion.  If you are not ready to answer any question about your stance on abortion, which is an issue that gets hashed to death in every single election, intelligently and with references, you are an idiot!  Second, he has damaged the Republican bid to gain a majority in the Senate so badly, and he is such a target now, that he should have stepped down in time to allow another candidate to run.  He should have bowed out and put the success of the greater mission above his own personal fortunes.