WashPo columnist ties Akin remarks to “anti-science” abstinence ed
Each month, a woman releases an egg (“ovum,” in science speak), which travels down one of two fallopian tubes and hangs out in the uterus for some days awaiting a sperm. If a sperm and egg meet, usually through intercourse, and connect, in a process called fertilization, a pregnancy can occur. The egg, which is a cell and thus cannot be said to have anything like feelings, does not distinguish between the sperm of a rapist and the sperm of Prince Charming.
I learned this information in the seventh grade, thanks largely to a yellow paperback given to each member of our class by our biology teacher. The book was filled with edifying drawings and explicit information. And though it was titillating – when you’re 13, all information of this sort is titillating – it also instilled in me a profound fear of getting pregnant as an adolescent as well as the clearest possible sense of how that might occur.
Today, thanks to a successful campaign largely by members of the conservative Christian community to remove frank talk about sex from schools and teach abstinence instead, kids don’t learn that kind of information….
Instead of learning about how sex works, kids are getting the message that the mechanics don’t matter because, in any case, it’s yucky girl stuff… which is exactly the kind of thinking that might lead a person to grow up and, at the mature age of 65, to go on TV and talk about how rape, if it’s really rape, doesn’t get you pregnant. The concern here is not just that Akin is a numbskull. It’s that Akin’s disinterest in the facts is reflective of a broader contemporary disinterest in facts – and in science. Religious faith is crucially important to so many lives, but it should not be a hall pass that allows you to sit out the class on how babies are made.
~ Lisa Miller, attempting to tie Rep. Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” remarks to abstinence education, The Washington Post, August 23
[Image via pointofview.net]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Actually most conceptions occur while the egg is in the fallopian tube, that person should check her science. Is anyone else sick of this Sippenhaft? I was arguing with something about Rep. King’s remarks and at one point the person actually said she doesn’t care what he actually said or meant, what was important is the “broader” point that all Republicans don’t know science, yada yada yada. The issue is never the issue, the issue is always the Revolution, I suppose.
As someone who had a mom who exercised her “hall pass” and had me sit out on the class on how babies were made in California in fourth grade so she could teach me herself in a more appropriate manner and with context through one of her pregnancies with a sibling later on (unfortunately, my brother didn’t make it)-this person can just shove it.
I’d like to know how Ms. Miller has applied her scientific knowledge to abortion. Or can I compare her to an expert auto mechanic who wouldn’t care if you put sand in your gas tank, or drove it off a cliff, for that matter?
Sure. That’s why unplanned pregnancies occur. People just don’t understand how babies are made.
I can’t believe people are still talking about Akin. That story is so two days ago.
All throughout grade school and high school my kids were educated as to what happened when and why – not by the school, but by their mother and I. In fact, the school system completely avoided any serious study of human embryological/fetal development. It was sort of “magical”… sperm unites with egg, then poof 9 months later a baby is born.
My daughter questioned why they skipped human development, but got the run-around by faculty. She’s getting the same run-around when she brings it up in college.
Lisa Miller would not like to debate the whole human development issue, because she’d get her clock cleaned by many abstinent home-schooled teens.
Progressives make claims about science and logic, but studiously avoid serious scientific discussions about the issues.
It is unfortunate that Republican US Senate candidate of Missouri got caught in a web of words and theories. He used the phrase “legitimate rape” when he meant forcible rape. I remember years ago reading in some pro-life literature that pregnancy is uncommon after forcible rape. Was the information that Mr. Akin and I had absorbed incorrect? I don’t know. I have been doing some internet research on rape and pregnancy. Some evolutionary biologists and sex theorists claim that pregnancy is more likely after rape. However I do not have much confidence in these findings either as sexologists often have their own biases and agenda. This was the case of Alfred Kinsey, a sexologist, in the 1940s and 1950s who greatly exaggeratred the occurrence of promiscuity and homosexuality in American society at that time; but which gave excuses for the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. It was later discovered that Kinsey was caught up in sexual depravity in his own life and used data that was greatly flawed.
On the political point of the controversy over Todd Akin we see a lot of double standards used by not only by liberals but by mainstream Republicans against pro-life and pro-traditional Republican candidates. Although Bill Clinton was accused by a number of women of either rape or sexual misconduct, the Democrat party stood firmly behind Clinton and he is going to be the keynote speaker at their convention.
On abortion Obama gets away with being a pro-abortion radical that was willing to let babies born alive die unattended after botched late-term abortions.
Another ironic point: Norma McCorvey, the figure head in the Supreme Court ROE vs
WADE decision in January 1973 that legalized abortion had claimed that her pregnancy had been due to rape. Norma, who later converted to being a pro-life activist, said that she had not been raped. So the entire pro-abortion ruling was based on a foundational lie!
I am opposed to sexual immorality of all sorts and greatly opposed to rape. From all I can learn about Todd Akin he is an honorable man with two daughters of his own. He has been firmly pro-life, pro-family through his entire career. I am sorry that the race in Missouri has fallen into a snare. But speaking for myself I am standing with and supporting Mr. Akin in his US Senate bid.
Another ironic point: Norma McCorvey, the figure head in the Supreme Court ROE vs
WADE decision in January 1973 that legalized abortion had claimed that her pregnancy had been due to rape. Norma, who later converted to being a pro-life activist, said that she had not been raped. So the entire pro-abortion ruling was based on a foundational lie!
How soon abortion advocates forget this fact. Yes, and they also forget that the Supreme Court at the time of Roe v Wade was comprised of, gasp, white men.
Here is a discomfiting possibility: Does legal abortion make it more likely a rapist will KILL his victim after he rapes her?
When a woman is past 50, her chances of being forcibly rape dramatically drop. But her chances of being killed if she is rape dramatically rise. Why is this? It seems that part of the reason is that a man who rapes an elderly woman knows there is no possibility of impregnating her. Thus, he might as well kill her.
If he rapes a younger woman, there is at least the possibility that she will bear his child. If this is less likely, does he become more likely to murder her?
Yes, and rape wasn’t bad enough. They claimed it was a gang-rape. The bigger the lie, the more they challenge you to risk speaking against it.
The “shaming” is all on the abortion-tolerant side, not ours.
Without touching the Akin question, the mechanics of how sex works and how one gets pregnant belong in a biology class, not a sex-ed class. The bio aspect of sex and pregnancy should be basic refreshers only in sex-ed. I suspect this woman doesn’t know much about how school works from the other side of the teacher’s desk.
Education isn’t magic. Eleanor Cooney was fully informed as to how a female gets pregnant when she got pregnant in the illegal abortion era. In her own words, this highly intelligent and accomplished woman was a 17-year-old girl who “got stupid” and acted recklessly.
She came from a family that had answered all her questions, was extremely liberal and open-minded. She had not the slightest fear of stigma.
Yet she got pregnant and once she realized she was pregnant, she was bent on aborting. She didn’t “decide” to abort or even really “choose” to abort. She found the condition of being pregnant utterly intolerable and was absolutely determined to eject the fetus which she did despite the anti-abortion laws of the time period.
Tell her I said “Congrats.” and ask her if she wants a cookie. Tell her I said that. Deadpan, just like I did.
I can’t believe people are still talking about Akin. That story is so two days ago
JDC, it’s going to be talked about until the End of All Time.
The media just loves a nice, juicy white male Republican who makes questionable comments.
The truth is: Abstinence education goes into far more detail about human anatomy, reproductive science and embryology than any secular middle-school sex-ed booklet.
Abstinence education also teaches young people about the value of human life, human marriage, and how much a young person loses by engaging in sexual activity before he-or-she is physically, emotionally, and spiritually mature enough to accept the responsiblity of sex.
I have no idea where Ms. Miller gets the idea that abstinence education shies away from “frank talk about sex .” We are very frank and complete.
Aside from being more scientific and more honest, the other major difference between abstinence and the secular “safe sex” model is this: Abstinence Education does not teach that contraception protects children (or adults) from the medical, emotional, and spiritual dangers of premature and promiscuous sex.
Since we refuse to teach that “contraception = safe sex,” they say we are unscientific. However, the overwhelming weight of truly scientific data supports abstinence ed My family is very glad that our children had an abstinence program available…. Our sons are in their twenties now, and still very glad for it.
“The media just loves a nice, juicy white male Republican who makes questionable comments.”
But not near as much as the liberal media crave a black conservative who steps on one of their PC landmines.
Because a black conservative blows up the liberal’s/progressive’s convenient racial stereotypes and fabrications.
Ask Condoleeza Rice, Star Parker, Clarence Thomas, Ben Kinchlow, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Herman Caine, Allen West, …
“How soon abortion advocates forget this fact. Yes, and they also forget that the Supreme Court at the time of Roe v Wade was comprised of, gasp, white men.”
The additon of four females, caucasian Sandra O’Connor, two liberal Jew, Ruth ‘Buzzy’ Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan and a liberal latina, Sonia Sotomayor, has not wrought an improvement in prospects for pre-natal children.
Ken,
Ben Kinchlow? Whatever happened to him? I always got the feeling he was a default Democrat.
Amazing how a 20-second clip can expose the entirety of a person’s intellectual capabilities and his his evil agenda.
I wish I could determine the same information from all of Obama’s endless blathering.
I find it particularly asine that little miss Millers discription is factually inaccurate. (Or at the very least grossly incomplete). In actuality a woman’s hormones trigger ovulation of one or more eggs in a usually but not always rhythmic cycle which ranges naturally from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, the egg(s) travels down the fallopian tube(s) and from the time the egg(s) are released sperm has about 3 days to fertilize the viable egg(s), usually, although not always, this happens in the fallopian tubes. If the egg does not get fertilzed, or if the embroy does not implant, or if the hormonal and chemical make-up of the uterus is hostile or unfriendly towards the newly created and/or implanted life the lining of the uterus sheds, restarting the process.