Akin’s rape remark reminiscent of messages in abstinence education

By Lisa Miller, WashPost, Published: August 23

Let’s stipulate that the remarks Rep. Todd Akin made last week – the ones in which he expounded upon the contraceptive properties of “legitimate” rape — were misogynistic and antiquated. (And nauseating and illogical. For if a woman’s body erects a protective shield against conception during forced intercourse, then if she does get pregnant… what? She must have wanted it?)

What I’d like to address here – and you’ll see how this relates to religion in a minute – is that Akin’s remarks were also plain ignorant. As in, not based in scientific fact. They showed an appalling lack of knowledge about the basic mechanics of the human reproductive system. The Republican congressman from Missouri may not want to get into the nitty gritty, but apparently he needs edification in the broadest possible way: 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. According to the Guttmacher Institute, more than 70 percent of middle schools teach abstinence education and only 30 percent teach about contraceptives. In high schools, more than 80 percent teach about abstinence and less than 60 about contraceptives. Akin, who has been given a 100 percent rating by the Christian Coalition and has a divinity degree from an evangelical seminary, has been a soldier in the campaign for abstinence ed: in 2007, he lent his name to a letter to the Congress supporting reauthorization of funds for abstinence education.

(More here.)