Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins: "Rape prevents pregnancy"
Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins: "Rape prevents pregnancy"
This is who they want to make decisions about our bodies.
With research by Grace Haley
One of the most striking things about the anti-abortion movement is how they never change—not really. Despite the shiny new slogans and shifting strategies, this new generation of activists are essentially the same ignorant misogynists we’ve been dealing with for decades.
And thanks to our researcher Grace Haley, Abortion, Every Day has one of the best examples of this that I’ve seen in a while: In an interview last month with “The Boom Clap Podcast,” Students for Life president Kristan Hawkins claimed that “sexual assault actually helps prevent a lot of pregnancies itself because of your body’s natural response.”
Yes, that’s right. Over a decade after former Missouri Representative Todd Akin said “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” the woman that conservatives have positioned as the future of the anti-abortion movement said the same exact shit.
Here’s the full quote:
“Surprisingly people tend to think that every woman who is a survivor of sexual assault gets pregnant, which is not true. About 5% of women who survive sexual assault get pregnant, and actually the horror of the sexual assault actually helps prevent a lot of pregnancies itself because your body’s natural response to this atrocity that’s happened.”
If you can stomach it, I’ve embedded the episode below. Her comments on rape and pregnancy come at about 50:40 mins into the show.
Also please remember that this is one of the groups trying to end access to abortion medication by using fake and mischaracterized data, and that they’ve recently petitioned the FDA to reverse approval of mifepristone using a false and bizarre claim that the medication is poisoning our groundwater. Students for Life also wants to make contraception illegal: they claim hormonal birth control is an abortifacient.
So we’ve always known that Hawkins’ grasp of science, biology and pregnancy is lacking—but this latest admission goes above and beyond. These are the people that conservatives want us to believe know best about our bodies. These are the ‘leaders’ that the anti-abortion movement wants to decide what kind of medication we can take and what kind of healthcare we can access.
They can’t be fucking serious.
I have have zero tolerance for ignorance.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_from_rape
"The current scientific consensus is that rape is at least as likely to lead to pregnancy as consensual sexual intercourse, with some studies suggesting rape may actually result in higher rates of pregnancy than consensual intercourse.[1][2][3]"
Tell that to the puppet that runs the Students for Life.
And while you're at it, tell the GOP the "Pro-Family Party" they could have prevented 60% of all abortions in the last 50 years by supporting MARRIED MOTHERS WITH CHILDREN. It has been married mothers throughout all of human history that have had the MOST abortions. It's almost like there's a reproductive flaw/failing in the "perfection" that is touted as nuclear family unit. The men are more than willing to make them, but they've made it abundantly clear that is the extent of their participation, hence the historical NEED to reduce the burdens of the Mother.
Make them EXPLAIN that reality. That in their pro-religion, patriarchal system, that it is the women they share their bed with who would be the ones MOST LIKELY to end a pregnancy, for the sake of themselves and their living children.
All the Serena Joys needed to wake the hell up before she loses more than a finger for reading the Bible. Conservative women need to realize how abortion, miscarriage care, their men believing the dying having the right to rot in the womb, how "Christian Men" view RAPE and INCEST as acceptable forms of reproduction, ARE ALL DIRECT FORMS ACTS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. They are telling YOU THIS IS TO CONTROL YOU. TO OWN YOUR BODY.
If they're out there spreading lies that can be pointed out on WIKIPEDIA, I pray for the soul of every Conservative Christian Woman that's going to sleep next to the Devil tonight, selling all the rest of us out so she'll feel slightly more loved and a little less abused and used by her "spiritual" leader creep of a husband.
I saw & read a BBC article about Hawkins last night. Highly recommend. I’m gong to force myself to finish the broadcast today. From a policy standpoint she has essentially outdone her pro-life organizational counterparts by taking an all or nothing stance and is bullying the R party candidates/legislators because “she doesn’t care about the party. It’s not her concern.” This is causing a rift because the Susan B Anthony group & others like it have operated on an incremental change philosophy…* to not lose too many votes.*
She is right in there with the MAGA & Christian Nationalist mindset. Use the extreme. Flip the pro-choice verbiage on its head. My way or the highway. I’m right, you are wrong. Pre-born babies deserve personhood & all the complications (phrased as bonuses) for women that brings. It’s a mindfk.
The comment in this thread about removed from reality has a point, except I think this truly is her reality, for now. She has no hospital, OBGYN, economic cost experience. She is surrounded by like minded people & discounts anything that competes with her feelings about pre-born babies. Feelings that were originally formed from watching a video, produced in 1984, that was essentially a pro-life propaganda falsehood product.
Per article: She’s 38 & living in a large trailer with her husband & 4 kids traveling around the country. Her husband, who has teaching credentials, is home schooling. Essentially, a self created bubble funded by like minded converts. When Pro-Publica gets done researching SCOTUS, maybe their talented researchers will dig into the dark money behind this operation & others like it.