Dr Phil Gingrey, You Should be Ashamed of Yourself.

Georgia Gongressman Phil Gingrey (R), who ran a “pro-life” Ob-Gyn practice in Marietta, Georgia before joining Congress, has tried to use the cloak of the medical profession to legitimize Rep Todd Akin’s remarks on pregnancy and rape, calling Akins  “partially right” in claiming that “legitimate rape” rarely results in pregnancy.

“… ‘Look, in a legitimate rape situation’ — and what he meant by legitimate rape was just look, someone can say I was raped: a scared-to-death 15-year-old that becomes impregnated by her boyfriend and then has to tell her parents, that’s pretty tough and might on some occasion say, ‘Hey, I was raped.’ That’s what he meant when he said legitimate rape versus non-legitimate rape. I don’t find anything so horrible about that. But then he went on and said that in a situation of rape, of a legitimate rape, a woman’s body has a way of shutting down so the pregnancy would not occur. He’s partly right on that.”

And I’ve delivered lots of babies, and I know about these things. It is true. We tell infertile couples all the time that are having trouble conceiving because of the woman not ovulating, ‘Just relax. Drink a glass of wine. And don’t be so tense and uptight because all that adrenaline can cause you not to ovulate.’ So he was partially right wasn’t he? But the fact that a woman may have already ovulated 12 hours before she is raped, you’re not going to prevent a pregnancy there by a woman’s body shutting anything down because the horse has already left the barn, so to speak. And yet the media took that and tore it apart.”

Dr Gingrey, you should be ashamed of yourself.

As an Ob-Gyn, you must surely know that if anything,  pregnancy rates after rape are higher than one would expect after a single act of unprotected intercourse, and there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the stress of a rape prevents pregnancy.  Even if you didn’t know it before Akin’s remarks, you should know it by now,  since your own professional organization, ACOG, has called Akin’s remarks remarks “medically inaccurate, offensive and dangerous.”

This man may represent the state of Georgia, but he does not represent science or the medical profession on this issue.

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Update 1/15/13

Gingrey has since issued a statement on his remarks –

At a breakfast yesterday morning, I was asked why Democrats made abortion a central theme of the presidential campaign. I do not defend, nor do I stand by, the remarks made by Rep. Akin and Mr. Mourdock. In my attempt to provide context as to what I presumed they meant, my position was misconstrued.”

And I’ve softened my last statement on this post, having had 24 hours to cool down a bit.