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This is the exact sort of ignorance that Akin was preaching. There’s no magic “chemical reaction”, if a woman is ovulating and she gets raped, if the rapist ejaculates inside her and the sperm reaches the egg, boom, you have pregnancy just as you would at any other time.

Wrong. Stress alone can terminate a pregnancy. The woman's body is a hormonal engine with an emotional "electronic ignition". Emotions alone can affect all sorts of chemical changes in a woman's body. Life is very delicate...

Stress can terminate a pregnancy, definitely, it does nothing to prevent one. There is absolutely ZERO scientific proof of any kind that a woman who is ovulating and ends up getting raped, has any sort of magical "protection" against pregnancy.

Statistically, miscarriages increase slightly percentage-wise in pregnancies that were due to rape, but not a tremendous difference over the norm(15-20% vs 10-20%)

“If a woman’s ovaries have already released an egg, she’s just as likely to get pregnant from a rape as she would be from a voluntary encounter,” Dr. Barbara Levy, vice president for health policy at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told NBC News. “From the biological standpoint, a woman is at risk for pregnancy if she’s at a vulnerable point in her menstrual cycle when the rape occurs.”

Note that Akin didn’t say that women who are raped NEVER get pregnant, he said they rarely do. What if he said he thought there was a link to abortion and breast cancer?