In case you might think that this is hyperbole, Mike Pence is making the rounds and saying that one of the things he’s looking forward to in a second Trump administration is mifepristone being banned on day 1.
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One interpretation of the Comstock Act is that it’s a restriction of what can be sent via USPS (the text of the law references “the mails”).
Fortunately we have UPS, FedEx, Amazon Logistics, et. al.
(The Comstock Act also prohibits sending things that are intended for indecent or immoral use. Presumably no sex toys, pornography, or other stuff that might offend Mike Pence…)
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I’ve probably mentioned this before, but there is a fun feminist time travel novel called The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz in which Comstock is one of the main bad guys. There are 2 rival factions fighting an “edit” war in the timeline, one to preserve women’s rights and one to oppose it, and both end up deciding that stopping / helping Comstock in the 1890s is the key to the battle.
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Some doctor has decided to do some math. Someone can check the math, as I’m septic.
Sorry, I mean sepsis.
I mean, skeptical.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/24/1226161416/rape-caused-pregnancy-abortion-ban-states?ft=nprml&f=1002
So 65,000 pregnancies as a result of rapes in states that ban abortions.
Numbers used:
- 523,000 rapes in states with abortion bans after bans were enacted.
- 12.5% end up as pregnancies.
Seems both are W.A.G.'s
But the math is correct.
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12.5% seems super high to me. Women are only ovulating a few days every month. And when I was trying to conceive, I was told that it usually takes about 6 months of trying on average (it took us 2), and that’s with having sex many times during every ovulation.
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also assuming many of the women are on birth control, as well as rapists that use a condom
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Also, in at least some of the no-abortion states, isn’t Plan B still legal?
Should we see an increase in live births, or at least birth rates?
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According to the American Pregnancy Association, With frequent unprotected sex, most healthy couples conceive within one year. Of all couples trying to conceive:
- 30 percent get pregnant within the first cycle (about one month).
- 60 percent get pregnant within three cycles (about three months).
- 80 percent get pregnant within six cycles (about six months).
- 85 percent get pregnant within 12 cycles (about one year).
- 92 percent get pregnant within 48 cycles (about four years).
What can I say, my experience is being in that first 30% 
12.5% seems unreasonably high to me to, but the point is that even if it’s off by a factor of 2 or 3 or even 6, that’s a crap ton of rape-caused pregnancies.
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So, about 3 days per month?
Or, 10% or so?
Kind of implies that, assuming rapes are uniformly distributed by day, each rape during ovulation results in a conception.
Thus, God wanted those babies to be conceived and thus born.
/s
Yeah, I think it’s high, too.
Perhaps rapists are more particular about raping ovulating women? Like they’re animals and they know? Or perhaps, like other species, the ovulating women advertise it by peeing on trees or something. All I know about women is from the animals on “Planet Earth,” so I’m no expert.
I was thinking we could be talking about the figure being off by a factor of 10-20 or more.
It depends on what the probability of conception from a single act of boinking during ovulation, the proportion of rapes that occur to fertile women, use of contraception, use of Plan B, …
Even at a factor of 20, that’s still an awful lot of potential additional mental anguish being inflicted.
In 2004, there was a survey that examined reasons cited for getting an abortion. Rape was cited by only 1% of respondents. https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/tables/370305/3711005t2.pdf
I wonder if a better estimate could be to tally pre-ban abortions and multiply by 1%-2%.
Even if the number ended up being 1 or 2…that’s still too much collective additional potential trauma.
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That’s an interesting way to do it.
But, the question was not, “how many abortions due to rape were performed?” It is “How many rapes result in pregnancies?”
Whether they were getting or being prevented from getting aborted or not is an entirely different question, all together.
Age is a big factor in how likely you are to get pregnant, I’m guessing.
Also, women can get pregnant even from sex when they are not ovulating (so google says), although women trying to get pregnant will obviously not want to rely on that. So the fertile window is misleading.
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True, but linking rape, pregnancy, and abortion bans would suggest that a better metric to represent a particular potential harm from the abortion bans is “number of rape victims who would have sought an abortion if they were available”.
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Please explain
Did you skip over the “/s”?
That is the most important part, and I had to include it in case anyone thought I was serious about God’s existence.
Maybe rapes that result in pregnancies are more likely to be reported ?
I didn’t read how the estimate was done, but this seems reasonably likely. More so than rapists being unconsciously more attracted to ovulating women, though that is not a completely outrageous idea.
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Since the details of the estimate were not made public, i’m assuming more W A G than sense.
So we get to make our own guesses from wild asses.
You know what would fix all this pregnancies from rape issues?
Summary
More gay and lesbian rapes.