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"  In the 18th century, rapists used the pregnancy of their victims as evidence that the sex was consensual, because it was the medical belief that conception indicated that she had &amp;quot;enjoyed&amp;quot; the encounter. There are times when I think the GOP hasn&amp;#039;t researched any reproductive biology that isn&amp;#039;t written on scrolls, the Bible, or strip club napkins. They could all use a refresher course on the female anatomy \u2014 or even that &amp;quot;The hipbone&amp;#039;s connected to the backbone!&amp;quot; etc. children&amp;#039;s song about the human body. To wit: The Washington Post reports: Rep. Trent Franks, one of the Republican House representatives behind the 20-week abortion ban that was thankfully shot down in Arizona (now at 24 weeks), argued against the left&amp;#039;s argument that abortions are often physical and emotion lifesavers in the case of rape or incest with the following nugget of anti-scientific hogwash: &amp;quot;Before, when my friends on the left side of the aisle here tried to make rape and incest the subject \u2014 because, you know, the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low.&amp;quot; Of course, both medical and political sources responded to the contrary as quickly as they did after Todd Akin&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;legitimate rape&amp;quot; comments last year, when he intimated that the female reproductive system was some kind of Venus flytrap that could &amp;quot;shut the whole thing down&amp;quot; if the rape was &amp;quot;real.&amp;quot; (Even Mitt Romney found the remark appalling.) The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists say that there&amp;#039;s no truth to Franks&amp;#039; claim, and last year the Washington Post cited a 2003 study that found that one single act of rape was twice as likely to result in pregnancy than consensual sex. (Around that same time, Senate candidate Richard Mourdock was politically slaughtered after saying that a pregnancy conceived from a rape was &amp;quot;God&amp;#039;s will.&amp;quot;) Luckily, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) was there to hold it down: &amp;quot;I just find it astonishing to hear a phrase repeated that the incidence of pregnancy from rape is low. There&amp;#039;s no scientific basis for that. And the idea that the Republican men on this committee can tell the women of America that they have to carry to term the product of a rape is outrageous.&amp;quot; Um, yes. Now that there are a number of Republican cautionary tales whose reputations have been destroyed for making these kinds of baseless, ignorant generalizations, you&amp;#039;d think politicians like Franks would tread lightly \u2014 at the very least, do some homework \u2014 before charging blindly into women&amp;#039;s reproductive rights issues.  Look. These are GROWN-UP HUMAN BEINGS who are RUNNING OUR COUNTRY and believe that this is an anatomically-sound diagram of a vagina. I knew how babies were made when I was 13, after my mom left a copy of It&amp;#039;s A Girl Thing on my bed. Can President Obama carve out a piece of the national budget to send the entire Republican party copies of It&amp;#039;s A Girl Thing? Follow Anna on Twitter. Image courtesy Getty "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/news/a13217/rep-trent-franks-rape-pregnancy-rare/>