Pregnancy from rape
In Europe, from medieval times well into the 18th century, a man could use a woman's pregnancy as a legal defense to "prove" that he could not have raped her.
[20] Smith also cites veterinary scientist Wolfgang Jöchle, who "proposed that rape may induce ovulation in human females".
They discuss a variety of possible explanations and advance the hypothesis that rapists tend to target victims with biological "cues of high fecundity" or subtle indications of ovulation.
[18] Sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists have hypothesized that causing pregnancy by rape may be a mating strategy in humans, as a way for males to ensure the survival of their genes by passing them on to future generations.
Because of difficulties in bringing such cases to trial, however, "data from the period 1975–1978 ... indicate that, on average, only 413 men were arrested annually for statutory rape in California, even though 50,000 pregnancies occurred among underage women in 1976 alone".
[29]: 4 [31][32] Although some researchers suggest that pregnancy could be a choice made to escape a "bad situation", it may also be "a direct result of unwanted intercourse", which one study found to be the case for about 13% of participants in a Texas parenting program.
These were attributed to poverty, laws forbidding abortion for rape and incest, lack of access to justice, and beliefs held in the culture and legal system.
[5][34] A 1992 study in Peru found that 90% of babies delivered to mothers aged 12–16 were conceived through rape, typically by a father, stepfather, or other close relative.
[5][verification needed] Many of the youngest documented birth mothers in history experienced precocious puberty and were impregnated as a result of rape, including incest.
[37] More broadly, pregnancy commonly results from wartime rape that was perpetrated without the intention of impregnating the enemy, as has been found in conflicts in East Timor, Liberia, Kosovo, and Rwanda.
[38] Children may be born to women and girls forced to "marry" abductors and occupiers; this happened in the Indonesian occupation of East Timor and in the Lord's Resistance Army's conflict in Uganda.
[41] Children born as the result of wartime rape may be identified with the enemy and grow up stigmatized and excluded by their communities; they may be denied basic rights or even killed before reaching adulthood.
[42] Children of war rape are also at risk due to neglect by traumatized mothers unable to provide sufficient care.
[43] Chinese women and girls of all ages were raped, mutilated, tortured, sexually enslaved, and killed; unknown numbers of them were left pregnant.
[50][51][52] Feryal Gharahi of Equality Now reported:[53] After the Bosnian War, the International Criminal Court updated its statute to prohibit "confin[ing] one or more women forcibly made pregnant, with the intent of affecting the ethnic composition of any population".
[55] Treatment protocols also call for clinicians to provide access to emergency contraception and counseling on abortion in countries where it is legal.
[56] High-dose estrogen pills were tried as an experimental treatment after rape in the 1960s, and in 1972 Canadian physician A. Albert Yuzpe and his colleagues began systematic studies on the use of ethinylestradiol and norgestrel to provide emergency contraception after an assault.
[66] When a mother commits neonaticide, killing an infant younger than 24 hours old, the child's birth being the result of rape is a main cause, although other psychological and situational factors are generally present.
[71] Research by legal scholar Shauna Prewitt indicates that the resulting continued contact with the rapist is damaging for women who keep the child.
[72] Centuries later, in medieval Europe, the belief that pregnancy could not occur without consent was still standard; in fact, conception by a woman was considered a legitimate defense against charges of rape.
Britton states:[76] If the defendant confesses the fact, but says that the woman at the same time conceived by him, and can prove it, then our will is that it be adjudged no felony, because no woman can conceive if she does not consent.Medieval literary scholar Corinne Saunders acknowledged a difficulty in determining how widely held was the belief that pregnancy implies consent, but concluded that it influenced "at least some justices", citing a 1313 case in Kent.
[77] Against this, in his popular 12th-century Dragmaticon, the early Scholastic philosopher William of Conches noted the objection of Geoffrey of Plantagenet—count of Anjou in France and father of King Henry II of England—to Galen's idea, stating that it was certain that some rape resulted in births; William acknowledged that this occurred but averred that it was merely proof that some or all women experienced involuntary carnal pleasure from the act despite their lack of rational consent.
[79] A 1795 British legal text, Treatise of Pleas of the Crown, disparaged the belief's legal utility and its biological veracity:[73][80] Also it hath been said by some to be no rape to force a woman who conceives at the time; for it is said, that if she had not consented, she could not have conceived, but this opinion seems very questionable, not only because the previous violence is no way extenuated by such a subsequent consent, but also because, if it were necessary to shew that the woman did not conceive, the offender could not be tried till such time as it might appear whether she did or did not, and likewise because the philosophy of this notion may very well be doubted of.The 1814 British legal text Elements of Medical Jurisprudence by Samuel Farr claimed that conception "probably" could not occur without a woman's "enjoyment", so that an "absolute rape" was unlikely to lead to pregnancy.
If the uterine organs be in a condition favorable to impregnation, this may take place as readily as if the intercourse was voluntary.In more recent times, opponents of legal abortion have argued that pregnancy resulting from rape is rare.
[83] Blythe Bernhard wrote in The Washington Post, "That article has influenced two generations of anti-abortion activists with the hope to build a medical case to ban all abortions without any exception.
"[84] Historian Ian Talbot has written about how countries with Quran-based Islamic codes on rape and pregnancy use Sura An-Nur, verse 2, as a legal basis: "The law of evidence in all sexual crimes required either self-confession or the testimony of four upright (salah) Muslim males.
