This is blowing up on social media today, so I might as well put it in a post for discussion – the full article and video. Rep. Gingrey is my congressman. Yeah, I have some pretty spirited thoughts on his suggestion that a girl might’ve gotten pregnant by her boyfriend, didn’t want to fess up to her parents, and then opted to call it rape. I just don’t have the energy for a fight today. You can discuss though…
Rep. Gingrey’s statement about his comments.
On Akin comments:
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.
On gun control:
As a father and grandfather, I am heartbroken at the tragedy in Newtown. No parent, child, or community should have to suffer such devastation and overwhelming grief. At the same time, as we begin a national dialogue on how to prevent future tragedies, it is of paramount importance to defend our Second Amendment rights. Throughout my political career, I’ve been a tireless advocate of Second Amendment rights and will continue to be one moving forward.
{ 26 comments }
You skipped over the part where he said he is open to restricting the capacity of mags and requiring Americans to obtain government permission to buy and sell a firearm. He mouth may be saying second amendment but his heart is pure Diane Feinstein.
Didn’t someone comment that Boehner ought to be deposed and replaced with someone like Gingrey?
Gingrey is a disgrace to any physician who practices medicine based on science and facts. How cruel for a doctor, an obstetrician no less, to think a woman’s struggle to conceive is her fault and simply solved with a glass of wine and relaxation. Gingrey’s comments on rape completely ignore the violence and violation rape victims suffer, in addition to the rates of pregnancy, social stigmas, long term health impacts, and mental health repercussions.
I am ready to get behind a credible candidate to oppose Gingrey in two years. The party doesn’t matter-any reasonable person would be better than Gingrey.
Stress significantly reduced the probability of conception each day during the fertile window
Ovulation can be affected by stress, illness or disruption of normal routines
Stress is a reaction to situations that can cause harm to the body, which means the body will do everything it can to protect itself, even throw off menstrual cycles and ovulation to prevent pregnancy.
I don’t even know where to start with the stupidity that is your comment.
1) Ovulation CAN not WILL be affected by stress
2) Not all rapes induce that level of stress
3) Statistics unequivocally show that women are equally able to conceive through consensual means than if they were raped.
I’m not even….you’re wrong. Phil Gingrey is wrong. Stop defending the indefensible; it makes you and every other Republican look stupid. But it makes my job much easier, I guess.
Present your facts.
I would like to add that girls who are victims of statutory rape only frequently get pregnant. That’s how their boyfriends get caught (if not from their dads coming home and chasing the boy out with the shotgun).
Oh come on mpierce. Don’t present a liberal…oh sorry…Progressive with facts. It will just confuse them.
Also, I’ll add from http://www.WebMD.com:
http://www.webmd.com/baby/features/getting-pregnant-easy-ways-to-encourage-fertility?page=2
Call me unpolitically correct, but Alice and Sarah do not look like dude names to me.
I guess these two women doctors are cruel to think a woman’s struggle to conceive is her fault and simply solved with a glass of wine and relaxation.
All kinds of things influence health, including stress. Gingrey’s comments are callus concerning a women’s desire to plan a pregnancy. Too many factors must be considered before suggesting a glass of wine and distressing. His statement makes the women fully responsbile for not conceiving, which is far from being medically accurate. Please note the webmd site cautions on alcohol consumption for both men and woman trying to conceive. Medicine gets complicated when science and reputable research get in the way.
As for Gingrey’s comments on rape, those are completely inappropriate, offensive, and, as Toxic Avenger said, wrong.
“Gingrey’s comments are callus concerning a women’s desire to plan a pregnancy. Too many factors must be considered before suggesting a glass of wine and distressing.”
My wife got the same advice from her female OBG (it helped BTW).
“His statement makes the women fully responsbile for not conceiving, which is far from being medically accurate.”
No it doesn’t and his statement is more accurate than yours. He said “don’t be so tense and uptight because all that adrenaline can cause you not to ovulate.” Try actually using some logic.
Perhaps your characterization of the attempts of doctors to improve the chances of couples to conceive as a “disgrace” is offensive to those couples and their doctors. It is completely inappropriate.
And, of course, the people who have no idea what they’re talking about show up. Here’s a hint: NO WOMAN GETS PREGNANT DURING SEX.
Pregnancy happens hours and hours after sex. (You guys do understand that Plan B is a real thing that works by stopping ovulation _the next day_, right?) Hence here is _absolutely_ no chance of some sort of bodily reaction during rape stopping conception.
No matter what sort of trauma there is during a rape, no matter if their body is flooded with adrenaline during a rape, women are not still having a hormonal reaction to that trauma it the next day. Acute stress reactions usually disappear within hours, assuming it even happened in the first place. (ASR usually only shows up when you think you’re about to die or be seriously injured, which is not necessarily true during a rape.) And, more importantly, there’s no evidence that ASR stops ovulation in the first place! The hormones released during that basically just affect the nervous system.
Now, people’s bodies can, indeed, ‘shut down’ during a trauma, unrelated to ASR. And this reaction, if it continues after the actual trauma ends, is called ‘shock’. Shock will _kill you_ in less than hour, so, duh, obviously women do not wander around suffering from shock for a day or two after a rape. (Shock is only actually useful if severe blood loss is ongoing.)
Likewise, while _stress_ can throw off menstrual cycles and ovulation, when doctors talk about ‘stress’, they are talking about _long-term_ stress, which can indeed cause all sorts of medical changes in the body, including menstrual and ovulation issues.
But a woman’s menstrual cycle can’t be thrown off in the _single day or two_ between a rape and conception. That’s completely absurd. In fact, how the female body stops menstruation is to _stop building up the uterine wall_, which is something that can’t happen until an _entire cycle_ after the stress starts. It’s not just going to stop mid-cycle and _leave_ all that in there. (Duh)
And it’s basically the same thing with ovulation…that is something the body has built up to, and it’s not going to stop it mid-cycle because of ‘stress’. (It will, however, stop it with a massive burst of hormones indicating pregnancy has already happened, aka, Plan B. And, no, rape does not result in the release of those hormones.)
And rape does not cause ‘stress’ in the first place. Rape is _trauma_. Stress is, basically, _constant worrying_. Stress is generally not caused by single events, even very traumatic ones…it’s caused by constant minor problems. I’m not trying to dismiss stress here, it’s a serious problem. But it’s a serious problem almost completely unrelated to a single traumatic experience. There is PTSD, but PTSD, believe it or not, is less caused by the event than by the constant memories of that event intruding into life, so even that’s caused by ‘constant minor problems’.
Stress is caused by a mind under constant strain for weeks or months, not a single traumatic thing, and even it the single traumatic thing ultimately results in stress, which ultimately results in medical issues, it can’t magically do it _the next day_.
And even it somehow did cause stress, stress can’t shut down ovulation _at that point_ in a woman’s cycle anyway. It’s nonsense on top of nonsense!
I know all this vagina stuff is compete black magic to the right, but, seriously.
Katherine Helms Cummings, January 11, 2013 at 11:18 pm-
Those offended by Gingrey’s rape comments (mainly progressives and moderates) likely won’t have the opportunity to vote against Gingrey in the General Election because he will likely already be on his way out of office as lame duck after Second Amendment and gun rights’ advocates have their way with him in the Republican Primary.
Besides, though the 11th District that he “represents” has some increasingly moderate areas in it, particularly in Central and Southeastern Cobb and Northwestern Fulton counties, the district is overall thoroughly Conservative enough (with many pockets that some on the center and left of the sociopolitical spectrum might describe as “ultraconservative”) that it is unlikely that Gingrey would draw any challengers from within the GOP had his controversial comments been only about rape. Heck, the 11th is so thoroughly Conservative overall that it is still highly likely that Gingrey would easily win if he ran for re-election in ’14 if his controversial comments been only about rape and not guns.
But since Gingrey’s ill-advised rant included controversial comments about “gun control” that sympathized with and encouraged the far-left’s gun-grabbing agenda, Gingrey finds his political career at-risk as he is likely to draw challengers from his political right who are likely to have a lot of money behind them from pro-2nd Amendment groups, particularly the NRA.
What is it with Republicans and rape these days? Especially after seeing what happened to Akin and Murdock.
Heck, Gingrey even referenced Todd Akin’s and Richard Mourdock’s rape comment-induced campaign meltdowns in his comments while he was talking about rape, which makes what he said even all the more odd.
And then there were Gingrey’s comments about guns where he is basically in lockstep with Diane Feinstein and the anti-Second Amendment gun-grabbing far-left.
Comments like that make me think that someone on the far left may have gotten to Gingrey and gave him a few dollars to take a dive. Needless to say, in his comments, Gingrey has revealed his true blue-state colors as someone who cannot be trusted during this debate about “gun control”.
Second Amendment advocates might do well to watch their backs (and their guns and ammo) when they’re around Gingrey moving forward for they just might end up with a knife in them.
Will somebody PLEASE get this guy a primary challenger in ’14?
Sean Jerguson, white courtesy phone. Sean Jerguson, white courtesy phone.
Maybe voters will finally realize Gingrey’s a kook and boot his ass out next time. If a GOPer doesn’t understand it is time to shut up on the matter of rape, then he should be put out to pasture to continue the ‘horse left the barn’ analogy so awkwardly used by Gingrey.
What 3J said.
“I see no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons”– California Governor Ronald Reagan, May 1967.
Pinko.
“I see a reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons”– Harry, January 2013.
Reagan was one of the biggest gun banning presidents in our history. In fact, Obama’s record is infinitely better.
After seeing Black Americans in Oakland defending themselves from police brutality, Reagan signed the bill that outlawed carrying loaded firearms in the state. When he was president, he signed the law that banned the ownership of any fully automatic firearms not registered by May 19, 1986.
He supported the Brady Law where Americans have to ask the government for permission to buy a gun and he SUPPORTED THE ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN.
You aren’t actually trying to say “gun control” is based in racism are you?
Are you being sarcastic, or did you honestly not know?
http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/cramer.racism.html
snippet:
I’m not saying that everyone calling for gun control is a racist, but they’re certainly people ignorant of the history behind it.
How do make a wink smilie
http://www.georgiacarry.org/cms/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/racist-roots-of-ga-gun-laws.pdf
“Camilla Massacre – Birthplace of the Public Gathering Prohibition
On September 19, 1868, several hundred blacks and Republicans, nearly all
armed with muskets and shotguns11, marched 25 miles from Albany to Camilla
Georgia to protest the General
Assembly’s expulsion of 32 newly elected
black legislators. The elected black
legislators were expelled on the grounds
that the right to vote granted in the state
constitution did not include the right to
hold civil office.”
My understanding is that Reagan’s comment came about after 30 armed people entered the California state capitol with a proclamation about gun rights, carrying in the CA state capitol being legal at the time.
The Black Panthers were in the capital to protest for their Second Amendment rights and against the Mulford Act, which banned open carrying of loaded guns. Mulford was a Republican and carried the bill at the bequest of Reagan.
The goal of the bill was to disarm the Black Panthers who were shadowing Oakland PD to prevent police brutality. It was common for Black Californians to be beaten by the Police in Oakland. The beatings stopped because the Panthers would arrive on scene with loaded guns to watch and witness. The Oakland cops didn’t like being constrained.
Comments on this entry are closed.