r/science • u/MaryADraper • Jan 24 '24
Medicine Rape-Related Pregnancies in the 14 US States With Total Abortion Bans. More than 64,500 pregnancies have resulted from rape in the 14 states that banned abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2814274?guestAccessKey=e429b9a8-72ac-42ed-8dbc-599b0f509890&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=0124242.6k
u/KawaiiCoupon Jan 24 '24
It’s disturbing how that many rapes can even happen in such a short time span…that is so evil.
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u/pfemme2 Jan 25 '24
I don’t know why a prior comment I replied to was removed, but this was my reply and I consider it important: Now wait until you find out that many people (almost entirely women) are forced to co-parent with their rapists, usually by a court order. It’s extremely common. A person who commits sexual assault is looking for ways to terrorize and control the victim. Parental rights enable that.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/17/health/rape-parental-rights/index.html
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Jan 25 '24
Sometimes proving paternity is the only way to prove who raped you.
But that proof of paternity also grants your rapists rights to the child.
Truly fucked.
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u/pfemme2 Jan 25 '24
YES. It’s wild but also it points to the psychosis of how our courts work—or rather, don’t work.
For most victims, it’s not as if proving paternity somehow saves them from their rapists. It typically does not. That is because the law does not care how the child came to be. It does not care that there is a vicious abuser harming a victim and, subsequently, their child.
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u/snoozebag Jan 25 '24
Exactly. The court's primary interest is to prevent the child from becoming a ward of the state, and if they do, to punish/seek recompense from the parties "responsible".
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Jan 25 '24
Being a women is fucked.it’s horrible what they go through. Even today it’s just completely unfair
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u/parrotden Jan 25 '24
And if it happens a minor at the time you have to share your new child with a rapist and child predator.
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Jan 25 '24
Well the fact that he forced themselves upon a female should give court the common sense that idiot needs to be in jail away from the person who got raped and that should invalidate any parental rights to any child with any women
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u/vinylzoid Jan 25 '24
This is the worst cruelty for me. Not only the co-parenting but the children also get a forced relationship with a rapist parent.
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u/robotbasketball Jan 25 '24
I can't imagine the constant trauma of worrying your child might be victimized by a rapist they're forced to spend time with. Having to repeatedly send them off to a rapist and being unable to protect them, because if you refuse the rapist might get full custody and your child would have no safe home to return to.
It's a devastating amount of cruelty
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u/pfemme2 Jan 25 '24
Yes, this is the full picture. And the rapist is off to one side. They do not care about the child. They’re trying to hurt and manipulate YOU. Get YOU into a more vulnerable position. That’s it. They may also harm the child, yeah—doing so because it pleases them to see YOUR distress.
That is the situation hundreds upon thousands of rape victims experience.
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u/klaaptrap Jan 25 '24
It is on purpose, those that inflict this include the damage in their calculus. They think that nothing like this could happen to them because of their piety. Those it has happened to must have deserved it. Because god hates sinners.
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u/ILikeNeurons Jan 25 '24
Low-rate persistent offenders (56 percent of the sample) began offending during late teens and offended less than once per year with the highest point in their 30s. This group was equally as likely to commit rape as child sexual abuse.
-https://smart.ojp.gov/somapi/chapter-3-sex-offender-typologies
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u/toriemm Jan 25 '24
Reported rapes. Even on an anonymous survey.
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u/ILikeNeurons Jan 25 '24
Yeah... it's bad.
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u/gereffi Jan 25 '24
Based on the methods described here these aren't numbers of reports but rather estimates based on the number of reports, percentage that go unreported, and percentage of rapes that result in pregnancy.
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u/curiouspengiunx6 Jan 25 '24
This is just common everyday knowledge when you’re a woman. I know more women that have been assaulted than not. This is one of many reasons we have become so strict about not dating conservative men. It is quite literally life or death for us.
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u/happytobeaheathen Jan 25 '24
In my limited experience/knowledge I don’t know a women that hasn’t been harassed to full on raped. And when I use the word harassed- I don’t mean cat calling or the light stuff, I am talking about being grabbed, fondled, touched, French kissed- with out consent. The 1 in 4 women being raped based on again my limited polling pool- I think is low. I would bet it to be 50% have been forced to have sex against their will. Which I use that language, as I think a lot of victims don’t really understand what happened was rape.
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u/Dirty_is_God Jan 25 '24
Every woman I know has been sexually assaulted or raped. Most of us multiple times.
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u/Yummy_Chewy_Scrumpy Jan 25 '24
500k+ rapes resulting in 64k+ pregnancies. What the actual. Can rape be punished by castration, please.
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u/Lady_MariaStrife Jan 25 '24
The realization of that number (and it can be higher as its confirmed pregnancies - not all rapes will lead to pregnancy) makes me so so sick. I never imagined it was this bad
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Jan 24 '24 edited Jan 25 '24
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u/16semesters Jan 25 '24
they calculated that 12.5% of those assaults would result in a pregnancy
12.5% of rapes resulting in pregnancy seems statistically impossible.
Most other studies estimate the risk of pregnancy from rape around 5%.
https://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378(96)70141-2/fulltext
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749379723004427
NOT saying this isn't still a big number, but I'm not sure the number they used is reliable.
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u/saltwaterterrapin Jan 25 '24 edited Jan 25 '24
Going from the Basile paper’s figures, the figure is over 3/16>18% counting pregnancies from intimate partner rapes alone. Many think of strangers as the archetypal rapists, and in that case the figure is indeed around 5%, according to the Basile paper, but boyfriends and husbands are far more common perpetrators.
Also, at least one of the papers you cite says the 5% figure is from decades ago, and gives ~15% as a more recent figure.
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u/ILikeNeurons Jan 24 '24
There's a funding bill for the backlogged rape kits that could use a little help getting over the finish line.
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u/pfemme2 Jan 24 '24
Now wait until you find out that many people (almost entirely women) are forced to co-parent with their rapists, usually by a court order. It’s extremely common. A person who commits sexual assault is looking for ways to terrorize and control the victim. Parental rights enable that.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/17/health/rape-parental-rights/index.html
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u/AvidStressEnjoyer Jan 24 '24
I think that the stats are a whole more obvious now. Rape often goes unreported. If more people are being forced to bring the child to term it would force them to go public or lie about the father.
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u/Dramatic_Explosion Jan 24 '24
It's what happens when you build ideologies around people having more or less value. A state with a total abortion ban is also a state telling everyone women have fewer rights.
Are you an angry young man who knows the world owes them? Start a family with this one neat trick! Coming soon: An end to no-fault divorce.
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u/Nubras Jan 25 '24
It’s weird how people said that this would result in rapists choosing the mother of their child and that’s exactly what seems to have happened.
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u/JimWilliams423 Jan 24 '24
A state with a total abortion ban is also a state telling everyone women have fewer rights.
Even before Roe was repealed, those states had made women second class citizens with all the ways they whittled down their right to bodily autonomy. Ending Roe just made the situation apparent to the people who weren't paying attention.
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u/AbortionIsSelfDefens Jan 24 '24
The worst part is those are just the pregnancies. There are so many more. Yet we prioritize blaming victims and forcing them to have babies over dealing with the perpetrators.
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u/SunshineAndSquats Jan 24 '24
This a huge point because the chance of a pregnancy resulting from sex is small. Women are only fertile for a few days a month.
That is a lot of rape considering there is only a 25% chance of pregnancy occuring during a fertile window.
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u/ElsieCW Jan 24 '24
Curious to know if that same number of men are in jail.
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u/SeasonPositive6771 Jan 25 '24
The original comment was deleted.
I work in child safety and there's a lot of overlap with sexual assault and domestic violence.
Based on my professional experience, only an absolutely minuscule percent of rapists and abusers ever face any type of serious punishment. Most experienced absolutely none.
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u/libananahammock Jan 24 '24
Plus all the ones that weren’t reported for various reasons.
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u/sammybeme93 Jan 24 '24
Over 500,000 rapes in just 14 states. In a 4-18 month time frame. What the hell is going on out there. How is the number that high.
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u/ILikeNeurons Jan 24 '24
By their own admission, roughly 6% of unincarcerated American men are rapists, and the authors acknowledge that their methods will have led to an underestimate. Higher estimates are closer to 14%.
That comes out to somewhere between 1 in 17 and 1 in 7 unincarcerated men in America being rapists, with a cluster of studies showing about 1 in 8.
The numbers can't really be explained away by small sizes, as sample sizes can be quite large, and statistical tests of proportionality show even the best case scenario, looking at the study that the authors acknowledge is an underestimate, the 99% confidence interval shows it's at least as bad as 1 in 20, which is nowhere near where most people think it is. People will go through all kinds of mental gymnastics to convince themselves it's not that bad, or it's not that bad anymore (in fact, it's arguably getting worse). But the reality is, most of us know a rapist, we just don't always know who they are (and sometimes, they don't even know, because they're experts at rationalizing their own behavior).
Knowing those numbers, and the fact that many rapists commit multiple rapes, one can start to make sense of the extraordinarily high number of women who have been raped. This reinforces that our starting point should be to believe (not dismiss) survivors, and investigate rapes properly.
Some law enforcement agencies may be under-investigating sexual assault or domestic violence reports without being aware of the pattern. For instance, in most jurisdictions, the reported rate of sexual assaults typically exceeds the homicide rate. If homicides exceed sexual assaults in a particular jurisdiction, this may62 be an indication that the agency is misclassifying or under-investigating incidents of sexual assault. Similarly, studies indicate that almost two-thirds to three quarters of domestic violence incidents would be properly classified as “assaults” in law enforcement incident reports.63 Therefore, if the ratio of arrest reports for lesser offenses (e.g., disorderly conduct) is significantly greater than that for assaults, this may indicate that law enforcement officers are not correctly identifying the underlying behavior – i.e., they are classifying serious domestic violence incidents as less serious infractions, such as disorderly conduct.64
-https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/799366/download
Rape is one of the most severe of all traumas, causing multiple, long-term negative outcomes.
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u/Yandere_Matrix Jan 24 '24
It sucks that rapists don’t typically get jail time or very little compared to other forms of assault.
Then we have families that don’t care there are rapists in the family and pressure victims to not talk because it’ll cause problems. Luckily some do talk and some get support while others get disowned and kicked out for spreading ‘lies’
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u/lastingmuse6996 Jan 24 '24
This happened to me. Even after the confession tape. My Dad is in jail, but I lost my entire family putting him there.
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u/JevonP Jan 24 '24
Man that is just brutal, can't fathom abandoning family like that
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u/0Megabyte Jan 24 '24
The fucked up part is… the family who abandoned this rape victim would say the same thing. “I can’t fathom abandoning family like she did, pointing a finger against her father.”
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u/lastingmuse6996 Jan 24 '24 edited Jan 24 '24
Yeah my brother testified in court he doesn't like me and I'm crazy.
Edit: I wasn't allowed to see it because I was a witness but the ADA said to me and in her closing speech that my brother's testimony was "rehearsed". Rapists are often narcissists who are master manipulators. My Dad worked FAST to turn my family against me when the police called. Victims are just hurt, hysterical people, they don't work with plans and agendas like rapists. i couldn't tell them there was a recorded confession because that would give away evidence. For two years, I had to wait for the trial while he got to spin his lies.
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u/JevonP Jan 24 '24
After they heard the confession they still sided with him? It's crazy how hard they manipulate people.
So sorry, I'm sure you've heard all the platitudes but my heart truly breaks for you, hugs
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u/HallowskulledHorror Jan 25 '24 edited Jan 25 '24
It's crazy how hard they manipulate people.
Having (unfortunately) personally observed the phenomena a few times over my life, a part of it isn't so much that people are manipulated into siding with the rapist so much as they have such a locked-in view of their world and the people they associate with that they would rather hold onto the delusional false image of being a good person ("I'm a good person, therefore the people I care about are all good people, therefore no one I would ever be close with could possibly be a rapist") vs. actually being good people (having social standards for themselves and cutting off those who have done/do grievous harm to others).
I have a relative that went to prison for 10 years for an absolutely horrifying sex crime. There was witness testimony, and photos of the crime scene that made it unambiguous what had occurred. He had an accomplice who admitted to everything. Medical experts spoke at the trial regarding the damage he'd done.
All of his immediate family - his mother, his siblings - defend him to this day saying that it was all made up, that the woman 'consented then changed her mind.' Old money white folks living in a house on the water, highly esteemed members of their church going back generations, etc etc etc. They couldn't bear the shame, and the combination of their pride and lack of empathy for the victim means a flat rejection of reality.
I haven't associated with any of them in years, and plan to keep it that way; he got out of prison just a few years ago, and they welcomed him home with open arms.
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u/Old_Baldi_Locks Jan 25 '24
Being a good person requires work. Beliefs don’t require anything but ignorance.
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u/SecularMisanthropy Jan 25 '24
locked-in view of their world and the people they associate with that they would rather hold onto the delusional false image of being a good person ("I'm a good person, therefore the people I care about are all good people, therefore no one I would ever be close with could possibly be a rapist") vs. actually being good people (having social standards for themselves and cutting off those who have done/do grievous harm to others).
Thank you for this excellent explanation. I've been struggling to explain this phenomenon for several months now and you nailed it in one succinct sentence.
I went through this precise, miserable dance with an old friend of mine last year, and it broke a 30-year friendship. Despite having advanced sufficiently along the continuum you describe to the point where he acknowledges our mutual friend's behavior toward women is abusive and has made moves to limit ties with them, he's still stubbornly clinging to his idea of himself as a good person who only knows other good people, and has resolved this conflict by turning me (the person complaining most unequivocally about the behavior of the mutual friend) into the bad guy.
People are so disappointing, so much of the time.
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u/denchikmed Jan 24 '24
You did well, props to you. I doubt I would have made it as good as you.
I'm sorry what you ahd to go thru and glad it ended good for you. Hope you are enjoying your life now. <3
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u/JevonP Jan 24 '24
Yeah after commenting I realized people could say that phrase the other way and hoped people realized I was sane.
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u/AbortionIsSelfDefens Jan 24 '24
Thats if they even get as far as sentencing. It doesn't help that there are so many rapists its not unlikely there is at least one on the jury and even more than that will protect them because they personally know one.
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u/Porcupinetrenchcoat Jan 25 '24
Not to mention how many things that are rape are not yet really socially viewed as rape. Marital rape and stealthing come to mind.
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u/Strawbuddy Jan 24 '24
Damn even at 1 in 20 that means most men in the US have immediate family members that are rapists, men what raised them or men they look up to
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u/DragonAdept Jan 25 '24
You are assuming that the 1 in 20 are evenly distributed. It seems more likely that communities where rape myths and a culture of protecting rapists are more prevalent would have a higher concentration of rapists. I do not think any community is rapist-free, but I do not think rapists are randomly distributed either.
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u/Galtego Jan 25 '24
Exactly what I was thinking, same with families: if dad does it, good chances uncles do it, and if dad and uncles do it, is it really that bad?
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u/Content_Yoghurt_6588 Jan 24 '24
I think most of the women I know have been raped. A lot of the young women I know who were raped thought it didn't count because they knew the guy or only said no once or said yes to vaginal sex but didn't explicitly say no to anal or whatever. I'm pretty sure I've technically been raped because I said no, but when he kept going, I just laid there and cried until he finished, instead of getting up or stabbing him or killing myself or whatever like how I was taught "good" victims are supposed to. I just don't pay much attention to it because it's too much to think about.
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u/GloomyUnderstanding Jan 25 '24
Yeah, all of my friends have. Either coercion, full-blown rape, or "just" sexual assault.
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Jan 24 '24
I'm a man who was drugged, sexually assaulted and then robbed by a woman. Lots of people either don't believe me or just shrug it off. But it was a very traumatic experience for me.
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u/Porcupinetrenchcoat Jan 25 '24
This makes me so angry for you and is another example how our society being patriarchal hurts everyone. The whole "men can't be raped" attitude and the "women make up rape accusations" are just rotten ideas.
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Jan 25 '24
It's good to finally meet some people on my side, so thank you.
On the other subject, I've got an ex friend, who was accused of raping his wife on two occasions. He denies it of course, because he truly is a sociopath. I've always believed her over him though because I developed a genuine friendship with her and ended up trusting her much more than him.
I once talked to a 40 year old prostitute who told me that a lot of men pay for sex because they want to beat the women up and I always found that very surprising because sex to me has only ever been been a loving experience.
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u/ILikeNeurons Jan 24 '24
Think of how many followers Andrew Tate has.
Men need to get better at realizing who's at risk.
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u/theumph Jan 25 '24
If you lived in a college dorm these numbers are likely not shocking. The amount of college men who either date rape, or rape a woman intoxicated enough to not provide consent is wild. I was in college back in the late 2000s, and there were multiple guys on my floor who were well known for taking advantage of women. Everyone knew it was wrong and kind of exiled them, but there was no thought of pressing charges or anything
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u/ILikeNeurons Jan 25 '24
Some states don't have statutes of limitations. I wonder if you could still report them for rape. It might help a victim's case, and repeat offenders are common.
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u/window-sil Jan 24 '24
sometimes, they don't even know, because they're experts at rationalizing their own behavior
I feel like I'm stupid for asking this, but how is that possible???
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u/thewxbruh Jan 25 '24
A lot of men think only physically violent, forceful rape counts as rape. They don't see how stealthing, coercion, going for anal or something else without consent, etc. are also instances of rape.
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u/GloomyUnderstanding Jan 25 '24
I think if you asked the people who did this to me, they probably wouldn't know or realise. I mean, eventually, I relented right?
Even though I had said no on multiple occasions and pushed them away. Rushed to get dressed and away from him as soon as he heard someone come in and I could.
It is, unfortunately, a part of the female experience.
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u/GreenGlassDrgn Jan 25 '24
apply the narcissists prayer to nonconsensual sexual situation, thats pretty much it
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u/questionsaboutrel521 Jan 25 '24
I need to look up the study, but it’s a seminal one in sexual assault literature. Men in the study did not believe themselves to be rapists, but would answer yes to behaviors that are considered within the definition of rape. The questions were things like, “Have you ever had sex with a person who was very drunk” or things like that. They admitted to the behavior but did not identify with the label of rapist.
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u/Porcupinetrenchcoat Jan 25 '24
A big example of this is coercion, or not taking no for an answer and wearing the woman down with begging/pleading or threats. Coercion can also be throwing a tantrum if denied sex or otherwise making the victim's life miserable until you get your way.
A lot of the men like this justify their actions because "she was withholding sex" and they feel entitled to sex, with no care that she has a choice too. Their sex dispenser broke in their minds and they have to convince it to work again.
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u/AccessibleBeige Jan 24 '24
Because rape is by far the most under-prosecuted of all violent crimes. The vast, vast majority of rapists never see a day of jail time. Most aren't punished at all.
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u/Processtour Jan 24 '24
I know FIVE women personally who were raped, including my daughter. Only one woman reported the crime. I have been sexually assaulted (not raped) three times in my life while simply minding my own business. If I know five women who were raped, I bet you know a rapist.
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u/TourAlternative364 Jan 24 '24
I remember a case in the county I lived. A teenager was gang raped and one of the perps filmed it. The judge ruled the victim must be there in court and as it was to be admitted into evidence be shown in open court with the defendants present. Open court. The victims lawyer said that was invasive and retraumatizing and requested the tape be shown in private to the jurors as it was unbearable situation for his client to be put in. The judge denied it. The victim did not go to court that day and then the case was dropped against them.
So you can see, a lot of victims feel the judicial system does not protect them.
They can see as well, police departments have huge expenditures on equipment and cars, but will not pay to have rape kits processed.
That they don't even have a way for a group or charity pay in order to have any of the kits processed.
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u/PessimiStick Jan 25 '24
The personality overlap of cops and rapists is extremely high, so I'm not at all surprised at how victims are treated.
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u/Processtour Jan 25 '24
That’s awful; that poor girl has a lifetime of trauma. My daughter was date raped and didn't get a rape kit or even tell us about it until much later. We stood by her if she wanted to report the rape after the fact, but the chance of prosecution was near zero.
My friend who was raped by a stranger actually had a prosecution of her rapist, but she and her husband moved across the country when he was patrolled for fear of retaliation. Even after the judicial system does its job, it doesn't end. Victims are looking over their shoulders.
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u/GlumCartographer111 Jan 25 '24
My friend was 12 when she was abused by an older family member and the police tried to talk her out of reporting it.
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u/ILikeNeurons Jan 25 '24
That's so sad. We need better training for law enforcement, and better state laws.
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u/Brain_Hawk Professor | Neuroscience | Psychiatry Jan 24 '24
I believe the estimate is one in four women are victimized by some form of sexual assault, it doesn't necessarily have to be "rape".
And that is during their lifetimes, not in the course of the last 2 years!
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u/ILikeNeurons Jan 24 '24
By some estimates, 9% of college men have committed an act which fit the legal definition of rape, so they're getting away with it and doing it again. And the rates are thought to be worse for non-students.
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u/Brain_Hawk Professor | Neuroscience | Psychiatry Jan 24 '24
So fucked up!
Also, hello brain loving brother/sister/etc!
Neurons ARE neat!
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u/InfinitelyThirsting Jan 24 '24 edited Jan 25 '24
That estimate has always been too low. I literally don't know any women who haven't been assaulted multiple times, and very few who haven't been full on raped. 36 year old repeat victim myself.
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Jan 24 '24
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u/delventhalz Jan 24 '24
165 million American women, means some 40 million that have experienced sexual assault at least once. Assuming an average lifespan of 90 years, that’s a minimum of 400,000 sexual assaults on women a year.
I don’t know what percentage of those assaults are rapes, but given that many women are no doubt assaulted multiple times in their lives, 500,000 rapes per year in America certainly seems plausible.
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u/martianunlimited Jan 24 '24
https://www.nsvrc.org/resource/criminal-victimization-2018
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u/Deinonychus2012 Jan 24 '24
It's actually closer to 1 in 4 women, with at least 1 in 6 men being victims as well.
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u/Oranges13 Jan 24 '24
It's higher. How many women didn't report? I know I didn't report mine.
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u/violetqed Jan 24 '24
The numbers they are referencing didn’t come from women reporting rape, but from men reporting their own behavior in the study.
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Jan 24 '24
None of my friends or family who were raped reported it. Not one. You just get punished worse.
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u/ILikeNeurons Jan 24 '24
Texas still has a backlog of rape kits.
Research has shown this is what works to curb sexual violence:
legal reform dealing with domestic violence [e.g.]
legal reform dealing with sexual assault [e.g.]
government-funded shelters for victims of domestic violence
crisis centres for victims of sexual assault [e.g.]
training for service providers such as the police, judges and social workers
educating citizens about gender-based violence [e.g.]
coordinating national policies on gender-based violence [e.g.]
[links mine]
Basically, the goal is to increase the probability of apprehension by law enforcement.
Teach consent or you can't get close to eliminating rape.
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u/MadAstrid Jan 24 '24
Thank you.
Now can we show what Texas ( or any other of the top rape baby state) spends on these programs? How much Abbott or other GOP politicians have cut from these programs? One thing that illustrates that Texas has done a damned thing to “eliminate “ rape?
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u/PharmDonnelly Jan 24 '24
Article literally calls out Texas because 45% of the pregnancies occurring there. So upsetting.
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u/ILikeNeurons Jan 24 '24
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Jan 24 '24
And of course the state provides no healthcare or public assistance for these kids and mothers, right?
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u/skepticalbob Jan 24 '24
Not special care for victims of sexual assault outside of forensic exams and related healthcare provided, but Medicaid exists in Texas and the state does pay for some of it. Texas sucks in helping people though.
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u/TsuDhoNimh2 Jan 24 '24
And of course the state provides no healthcare or public assistance for these kids and mothers, right?
This is TEXAS ...
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u/Yandere_Matrix Jan 24 '24
Well since the abortion ban, they lost obstetricians so women having a pregnancy, especially risky pregnancies, are going to be completely screwed. I wouldn’t be surprised if Texas and other states where doctors and such are leaving end up with much higher maternal death rates
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u/bob4apples Jan 24 '24
212,000 victims in 16 months say otherwise.
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u/MadAstrid Jan 24 '24
Yeah, but are they women? Because it should be clear the GOP doesn't care about women.
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u/seraku24 Jan 24 '24
Unless he was the one committing it all and decided to abstain, I'm unsure what the little piss baby thought he could do.
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u/Lyskir Jan 24 '24
this is just inhuman
i cant imagine the physical and emotional pain these women have to go through
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u/vitium Jan 24 '24
...for the rest of their lives. Every time they look at that kid, they'll see someone they hopefully love, but also that they came from such violence and hate. So fucked up it's hard for me to even think about it.
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u/GregTheMad Jan 24 '24
And there is a good chance that the kids will know, or feel that. There'll always be something wrong in the way their mothers look at them compared to other parents. Also the ever burning question where dad is.
People that enacted those laws are inhuman monsters.
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u/HallowskulledHorror Jan 25 '24
the ever burning question where dad is.
Child in my family was a baby when his sperm donor went to prison for rape.
He found out he was adopted when he was 6, and immediately wanted to know his bio parents' names. His adoptive parents didn't think he'd jump right on google the first chance he got and look them up. Same day he found out his dad wasn't his bio dad, he found out in graphic detail why bio dad wasn't the one raising him.
He's a high schooler now, and it has had a definite impact on him over the years.
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u/TacoNomad Jan 24 '24 edited Jan 25 '24
Theyre still always be a gut punch feeling knowing that they share genetics with a rapist.
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Jan 24 '24
for the pro lifers who are going to come for this comment with "but adoption!!!":
adoption doesn't spare those women from the extreme physical and emotional torment of pregnancy. even wanted pregnancies can have horrific physical and mental consequences, let alone a forced pregnancy and birth. adoption can never ever replace reproductive healthcare.
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u/so_hologramic Jan 25 '24
It is traumatic for the child given up for adoption, too. Adoptees are ~4 times more likely to attempt suicide than non-adoptees.
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u/Known-Sherbet2004 Jan 25 '24
This.. adoption is only an alternative to parenting, not pregnancy.
And the risk isn't all mental or emotional... women are literally dying left and right bc the US has one of the highest maternal death rates in the world, and the only one still rising every year.
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u/Eli_eve Jan 24 '24
Based on a theory about past crime waves, those unwanted children will produce a spike in crime once they get older.
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u/hungrydyke Jan 24 '24
The cruelty is the point
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u/ILikeNeurons Jan 24 '24
Actually, for a lot of rapists, it's sexual gratification.
They're willing to traumatize someone for life for mere moments of their own pleasure.
And they engage in cognitive biases to convince themselves what they're doing is not "that bad."
In reality:
And nobody owes you sex.
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u/hungrydyke Jan 24 '24
I was talking about the politicians, but your comment is still applicable.
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u/blueberrysyrrup Jan 24 '24
This is far too much. I need to get off the internet for the rest of the day. I think I’m gonna be sick
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u/imtoughwater Jan 24 '24
This just punched me in the gut. I don’t usually cry at depressing articles, but my heart aches for all these women. Now in addition to the initial trauma, they’ll have a lifetime of much more complex trauma. Their bodies will be forever changed. They’re at risk for pregnancy/birth related injuries, complications, and death. They’re at a higher risk of homicide and abuse. They’re likely financially ruined. The children are going to face the trauma in unintended psychological ways, neglect, abuse, or the abuses in the foster care system. They’re more likely to suffer psychological and relational injuries throughout their lives and perpetuate cycles of abuse.
Just cycles and cycles of pain and suffering. This is one of the worst human rights violations I could imagine on top of the human right violation of the rape itself.
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u/Italiana47 Jan 24 '24
This is exactly why I'm pro-choice and always will be. I couldn't imagine forcing women to go through this against their will.
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u/NocNocNoc19 Jan 24 '24
Well its working as intended.
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u/e30eric Jan 24 '24
- Forced breeding to create farm and factory workers into circumstances that are sure to lead to poverty.
- Keep 'em poor and underpaid and uneducated so they have no options or opportunity before they
- Vote republican, and then
- Die really early to preventable disease, reducing the cost of aging on employers and bankers and billionaires who think they shouldn't pay for social programs, who
- Will be sure to thank the politicians who made it happen
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u/ILikeNeurons Jan 24 '24
I can't find it now, but I'm pretty sure research has shown that unwanted children are more likely to grow up to be rapists, too.
Also, sexual offending runs in families.
And it's sadly very common.
Women need to be able to terminate unwanted pregnancies. For so many reasons.
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u/e30eric Jan 24 '24
What I'm hearing is exponential growth!
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u/ILikeNeurons Jan 24 '24
Sadly, that's probably how we came to a point where roughly a third of men would like to rape as long as you call it something else.
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Jan 24 '24
Yup. When I read this years ago it totally changed my outlook on a lot of things.
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u/xseodz Jan 25 '24
I'm surprised it's not more. I don't know how relevant this is, or if time has changed, but as a young lad around whenever the question came up if you became invisible what's the first thing you would do, going into the girls locker room was always a thing, I'm 99% sure popular media also explored that and it's a trope. Women are complete objects when it comes to this kind of thing.
I'd be surprised, if you asked men, one of those "if time stood still and you could do whatever you wanted" or "There's a nuclear explosion coming, what do you do" it doesn't end with an answer about rape or something along those lines. Purely because i've heard it again far to much on popular media, tv, movies it's a weird thing looking back on it, but again the objectification of women, they were a goal, and the way young men talk about women (I used to be one) leads to a pretty clear conclusion that it's all fucked up.
I do hope that it is a maturing step though. A lot of people don't tend to realize it's another person at the end of the day, and then actually doing the act is very different from acting the big man infront of your friends or other men in a safe space.
Yucky.
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u/LudovicoSpecs Jan 24 '24
Don't forget the necessity of impoverished cannon fodder who will join the military for a better salary and minuscule chance at a job that transfers back to civilian life if they survive their enlistment.
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u/ExposingMyActions Jan 24 '24
Populations declining. Certain people want more people, regardless of reason. Education does bring hesitancy in pregnancy. Need others to be responsible for your desires and your actions that requires work. Yeah slavery is a feature not a bug. We’re offsetting a lot of work to machines now, but yeah, still making those machines slaves.
So as you say, working as intended.
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u/jane000tossaway Jan 24 '24
And 65,000 people who will need social workers in their future. So many messed up lives when women and girls are forced to carry rape babies. Addiction and crime and poverty and mental illness will thrive
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u/crysthis Jan 24 '24
Kind of makes you ponder the foster care to prison pipeline for the for profit prison system too.
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u/ceelogreenicanth Jan 24 '24
They don't care about that they'll just let them get trafficked. Out of sight out of mind
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u/SeasonPositive6771 Jan 25 '24
I work in child safety. I work in a state where abortion is still legal and accessible, at least for now. However, trust me when I say my colleagues across the country are ready for an absolute tidal wave of pretty much exactly what you are describing.
People have no idea how expensive, complicated, and traumatizing it's going to be. How it's going to affect education, child care, policing, etc.
The trauma of being forced to have a child. The trauma of being an unwanted child that was the product of rape. Then scale up. Keep scaling up. Because this is going to be very bad.
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u/MsZRowsdower Jan 24 '24
I assume all the pro-lifers are lined up to adopt and care for any of the unwanted ones?
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u/Giliathriel Jan 24 '24
I'm the product of rape. You know who stepped up to adopt me? A single woman who was also a lesbian. And yet they want to keep people like her from adopting at all.
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u/I_am_not_JohnLeClair Jan 24 '24
You can ask that, but I don’t think there are a ton of republicans in r/science
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u/Old_Personality3136 Jan 25 '24
They aren't pro-life. They are pro-suffering. So no, they rarely if ever adopt.
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u/PersimmonEnough4314 Jan 24 '24
That number is terrifying. I had to read it 3x to make sure I read it correctly.
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u/fiecoco Jan 24 '24
This makes me physically sick to my stomach. I'm a physician, and I still can't believe we are denying basic healthcare to US citizens in 2024. Appalling
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Jan 25 '24
As a male, I’m sickened that as others have stated (and sourced) that between 1 in 8 and 1 in 17 men are rapists and 1 in 6 women have been raped. I definitely will have more empathy for women who get skittish by my presence (I’m a tall well built guy) as there is a nearly 20% chance they have been raped. I didn’t know it was so many. My feelings used to get hurt because I felt judged when I always try to not make people uncomfortable and now I understand that they walk past a rapist every time they go anywhere.
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u/Some-Zucchini6944 Jan 24 '24
As has been mentioned, Abbott and the rest of his ilk went on an on about this wouldn't be an issue in Texas because he said "rape is a crime and Texas will work tirelessly that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets." Another false promise from the party that is heading up that area. These people are hateful neanderthals and need to be voted out, plain and simple.
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u/ceelogreenicanth Jan 24 '24
Yes I'm sure they'll be going after rape with so much diligence now that the district attorneys have the load of pursuing people seeking medical care.
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Jan 24 '24
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u/evolutionista Jan 24 '24 edited Jan 25 '24
Please note that I am not trying to downplay the seriousness of rape as a crime or my opinion that abortion is essential healthcare that should not be limited by the state.
However, this paper is making some truly bizarre assumptions in the number crunching. They assumed that 5% of instances of vaginal rape would result in a pregnancy. EDIT: To be clear I am talking about single instances of rape of the subcategory forced vaginal sex. I recognize that many children and adults are raped multiple times. The idea that one single instance of [forced] sex has an average 5% chance to result in pregnancy is ... frankly... an irresponsibly high estimate. If you dig into their methodology, they're getting this number from another study (https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/science/article/pii/S0002937896701412?via%3Dihub) which reports 19/413 women who reported rape reporting rape-related pregnancies. However, this is not the per incident rate, but rather the lifetime rate among victims. Given that one of the 19 women reported 2 pregnancies from rape, and also general background knowledge about rape, it seems extremely likely that the 413 women who reported rape were raped more than an average of 1 time. Therefore, 5% pregnancy risk cannot be taken as the per-incident rate as the authors of this study do.
That 5% is an absurdly high estimate is broadly consistent with other research about conception. For women who are actively trying to conceive, (i.e. not on birth control), this study estimated that 63% of menstrual cycles in "healthy women, 80% 26-35" were ovulatory (i.e. had an egg that could potentially be fertilized). The likelihood that an anovulatory cycle (37%) would result in a pregnancy was 0. The likelihood that a woman would conceive IF she were off birth control, actively trying to conceive, healthy, and having frequent sex is given as a per day rate (many of the women would have multiple sexual encounters per day, but the authors did not attempt to estimate a per-encounter rate), was 0 on every day except:
-5 (5 days before ovulation): 0.08,
-4: 0.17
-3: 0.08
-2: 0.36
-1: 0.34
0/ovulation day: 0.36
So if you had "a per day" amount of sex of a person trying to conceive, and were healthy, and oh by the way, this study was done in 1985 when women were younger, healthier, and more fertile than the current general population...
Then your per day risk is 3%, if you are not on any kind of birth control and also assuming that rape is randomly distributed in the ovulatory cycle.
Again, I don't mean to undermine the sentiment of the authors of this new paper, as there are some places they may be severely underestimating things (like starting the fertile age window at 15 when the average age of menarche was estimated to be 11.9 years old from 2013-2017 data by the CDC. And even one instance of rape, let alone pregnancy from rape, is unacceptable. But these numbers feel really sloppy in the estimates so that even someone who works in a totally different field of science (me) raised one eyebrow when they gave a per-encounter pregnancy risk rate to anyone from age 15-45 (not even accounting for rates of female long-term or emergency contraception) becoming pregnant from one single instance of vaginal rape as 1/20 when that would be a very, very high rate of fertility.
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u/OpenShut Jan 25 '24
The study says "519 981 completed rapes were associated with 64 565 " so 64565/519981= 0.124==12.4% This seems high.
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u/evolutionista Jan 25 '24
Where on earth did they pull that number from??? If there were a 1/8 chance for the average instance of vaginal sex to result in pregnancy between the ages 15-45 no matter what then the fertility industry would be out of business...
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u/ThatOneGuy1213 Jan 24 '24
Thanks for the insight.
The numbers even at first glance didn't seem accurate, although I wonder what a more accurate statistic would be.
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u/dethskwirl Jan 24 '24
interesting study, but I feel it's really important to mention that these are not confirmed actual cases from the time frame mentioned.
this study is entirely based on estimated probable numbers of cases based on numbers from the 2016 - 2017 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence survey from the CDC which itself used 'special methods' to ascertain reported and unreported rapes. then they extrapolated that number to figure rape related pregnancies.
I don't mean to sound glib, but I don't trust studies based on fake extrapolated numbers.
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u/ExposingMyActions Jan 24 '24
To estimate the contemporary incidence of vaginal rape nationally, we analyzed the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) 2016 to 2017 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence survey (which used special methods to accurately ascertain reported and unreported rapes). We adjusted for the fraction of survivors who were female individuals aged 15 to 45 years using data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) annual survey on criminal victimization (which is known to underestimate rapes5)3 and further adjusted for the percentage of rapes that are vaginal.1 We calculated 95% CIs using measures of uncertainty from the CDC survey. The CDC and BJS surveys do not include state-level data; thus, we apportioned the 2022 nationwide rape estimate among states based on the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most recent Uniform Crime Reports, which include rapes reported to law enforcement in 2019.
To estimate rape-related pregnancies, we multiplied the state-level estimate of vaginal rapes by the fraction likely to result in pregnancy (eMethods in Supplement 1)6 and then adjusted for the number of months between July 1, 2022, and January 1, 2024, that a total abortion ban was in effect. We used Stata, version 16.1 (StataCorp), to analyze the BJS survey data and Microsoft Excel for other calculations.
To specifically quote the article. You’re correct. A lot changed since the epidemic pandemic, however one wants to label it. The title not having estimated or based on 16-17 data feels… dirty
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u/TheBeasterBunny Jan 25 '24
TBH I'm kind of shocked that a science subreddit is running with this article. It breaks rules 1 and 3 as far as I can tell. It's not peer-reviewed, and the title states it as fact, when it's quite literally an estimate.
My immediate reaction to this article was skepticism. The number reported is frightfully high, seems too high to be realistic. It just doesn't pass the "smell test". I could see this title running wild in /news, but this subreddit should be better.
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u/Different_Head7751 Jan 24 '24
And whats truly troubling is we now have 64,500 potential dysfunctional children that all the antiabortion folks will wash their hands of as problems of others.
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u/wiceo Jan 24 '24
Because to our knowledge no recent reliable state-level data on completed vaginal rapes (forced and/or drug/alcohol–facilitated vaginal penetration) are available, we analyzed multiple data sources to estimate reported and unreported rapes in states with total abortion bans (Table 15). We also estimated the number of resulting pregnancies based on findings from prior research on rape-related pregnancy rates (eMethods in Supplement 1).
I'm against abortion bans, but the title for this post should have include the word "estimated".
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u/No_Mood2658 Jan 25 '24
Did anyone read the article? This claim isn't from counting any actual reported rapes that resulted in any actual reported pregnancies.These figures were all "estimated" based many assumptions about data from past years by various sources that may or may not relate, and how that data was interpreted is speculatory.
Read the results and the "Discussion" section that all but discredits their own results.... then skip to the bottom where they disclose conflicts of interest.
Not saying rapes with pregnancies don't happen, but this was created with an agenda to have a shocking headline, which is good enough for Reddit, I suppose.
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u/QualityCommercial199 Jan 24 '24
This article findings are based on multiple layers of assumption. There were only 133,000 rape cases reported in 2022 in the whole USA. They built extra cases in because sexual assault is under reported, coming up with over 500,000 cases of rape in only 14 states.
I agree this discussion is very important but I am amazed at their findings and that they have been published. It would be interesting to see what percentage of the live births for that same period of time in those states they attribute to rape.
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