Akin's Pregnancy "Science" Called Nonsense
People disagree on a lot, but all health experts agree the Senate candidate is full of crap
Representative Todd Akin's assertion that women who are victims of "legitimate rape" rarely get pregnant provoked outrage across the political spectrum, but the views he articulated are far from new in anti-abortion circles.
The idea that during rape, "the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down" to prevent pregnancy, as Mr. Akin said, has surfaced periodically among anti-abortion advocates over the past two decades, usually involving the term "forcible rape" to refer to what Mr. Akin called "legitimate."
