I Disagree with Todd Akin

"If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

In my post of two days ago I tried to construct a brief and clever response to Todd Akin’s gaff about rape that has created such a well-deserved firestorm. I was pretty much universally misunderstood in my effort at irony. So let me say directly what I intended to say by inference.

There are two things that are implied by this statement by Congressman Akin that are true, though they are not the truth he is focusing on.

“Legitimate rape:” The first is his use of a modifier for the word “rape.” While this choice is a thinly veiled alternative to “forcible,” its use does acknowledge that rape is a social reality that is hugely traumatic for victims and for society as a whole and we do not respond to it well. In its most basic form rape is unwanted sexual contact. This contact can be violent or subtle or come from strangers or from close acquaintances and even family members but no matter who is creating the contact, if she says “no,” it is rape.

“the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down:” The second is that one can easily understand that the trauma of rape might cause such hormonal distress that a woman could spontaneously abort. If this were to happen it would be understood as natural and in harmony with God’s will. But in fact this rarely happens. When rape results in pregnancy the chances that the pregnancy will be carried to term are the same as a pregnancy that results from a loving union. But the pregnancy, the fetus, the birth, and the child are all emotionally fused with the trauma of the rape. And that traumatic bond can not only bring great harm to the woman, it can also be a huge burden to a child who is seen as a product of a violent assault. So God has created the means by which the female body can shut that whole thing down. In a just society it is available over-the-counter.

I Agree with Todd Akin

 "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Congressman Akin has few friends these days and having decided to defy the Republican establishment by refusing to step down in his race against Claire McCaskill for the Missouri Senate seat he will face even more opposition. So I want to raise my voice in support of at least a portion of what he is saying that is so unpopular.
I agree with him first of all that his statement was poorly worded. And since he didn’t actually say what he meant to say, I have to interpret a bit what I think he actually intended. But two things, important things, jump out at me from this statement. One is that rape is not all of the same type. The second is that women must have a way shut down “that whole thing.”
President Obama has said that “rape is rape.” I don’t think that is true. A man coming in the window in the middle of the night is not the same as a couple of teenagers having sex when one is too young to give legal consent. I use as a basic standard that it is rape if one partner says, “no,” but sometimes the “no” is said too softly for the other to hear. I worked with many men convicted of rape in my psychotherapy practice and most of them deny that she said “no.” I have worked with a number of women who were ambivalent the night before but with the cold light of dawn found a part of them shouting, “No!” If she says, “no,” it is rape.
Still, it doesn’t seem right to punish him when she didn’t say the “no” out loud or at least loud enough for him to hear it. And I do think that justice requires (though is not limited to) punishment. So maybe her pregnancy is the punishment she gets for allowing herself to be raped. It was her choice, after all, to not say the “no” loudly enough.
The problem with that is that she is not the only one who is affected here. What about the unborn child. Why should the child have to suffer with a parent who sees him or her as a punishment? We know how critical healthy attachment to parents is to human development. What is the justice in saddling a child with a parent for whom they are a symbol of a disastrous mistake? No child should be unwanted.
This is why I agree with Congressman Akin that a just God will give “the female body” a way to “shut that whole thing down.” Under the stress of the rape the woman will naturally react though a process of introducing hormones into her system which will protect her and any potential child. This hormone is marketed under trade names Mifegyne and Mifeprex and commonly known as RU-486.