Rape and Pregnancy Statistics

Yet another wing nut Republican has made a stupid comment about rape and pregnancies.

GOP activist says pregnancies rare in rape cases "'Granted, the percentage of pregnancies due to rape is small because it's an act of violence, because the body is traumatized,' [Celeste Greig, president of the California Republican Assembly] told the newspaper. 'I don't know what percentage of pregnancies are due to the violence of rape. Because of the trauma the body goes through, I don't know what percentage of pregnancy results from the act.'"

Probably because I had just read a Nate Silver article on voting statistics I was curious what the statistics were. It turns out it's hard to know. Here are two sources I found interesting (and depressing).

RAINN, the Rape Abuse & Incest National Network breaks down the victims by Gender and Age. I found a lot of the statistics surprising:

"1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime (14.8% completed rape; 2.8% attempted rape)" But 1 in 3 American Indian or Alaskan women were victims of rape or attempted in their lifetimes.

At the end they did the math, "In 2004-2005, 64,080 women were raped [a DoJ survey]. According to medical reports, the incidence of pregnancy for one-time unprotected sexual intercourse is 5%. By applying the pregnancy rate to 64,080 women, RAINN estimates that there were 3,204 pregnancies as a result of rape during that period."

But I found the caveats revealing. The definition of rape here includes oral and anal penetration so those can't cause pregnancies. Some victims are on the pill and some attackers wear condoms so there wouldn't be a pregnancy. Some victims may not be able to become pregnant due to age or medical reasons. In some cases there are multiple incidents of intercourse.

A Wall Street Journal article from last August explores this a bit more, Pregnancies From Rape Prove Tough to Count.

"The biggest discrepancy is in the estimates used for the number of rapes in the U.S. These can vary in official government estimates from as few as 64,000 a year to as many as 1.3 million, about 20 times larger, depending on when and how rapes are counted."

"The Federal Bureau of Investigation counted 84,767 forcible rapes—as distinct from statutory rapes without force—in 2010, based on crime reports from local law-enforcement agencies. The Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey, based on polling Americans, counted 188,380 rapes and sexual assaults that year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, conducting its own victimization survey, counted 1.3 million rapes in 2010."

So the surveys are tough to do and not all victims are going to admit the incident or some details. Still, just to be clear, there seems to be no reason whatsoever to think the odds of getting pregnant from a rape are significantly different from consensual sex. And if you think they are, or think that's a reason to make laws, I think you're a moron.