Pregnancy from rape
is a potential result of rape. It has been studied in the context of war, particularly as a tool for genocide, as well as in other unrelated contexts, such as rape by a stranger, statutory rape, incest, and underage pregnancy. The 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.
Rape can cause difficulties during and after pregnancy, with potential negative consequences for both the victim and a resulting child. Medical treatment following a rape includes testing for, preventing, and managing pregnancy. A woman who becomes pregnant after a rape may face a decision about whether to have an abortion, to raise the child, or to make an adoption plan. In some countries where abortion is illegal after rape and incest, over 90% of pregnancies in girls age 15 and under are due to rape by family members.
The false belief that pregnancy can almost never result from rape was widespread for centuries. In Europe, from medieval times well into the 18th century, a man could use a woman's pregnancy as a legal defense to "prove" that he could not have raped her. A woman's pregnancy was thought to mean that she had enjoyed the sex and, therefore, consented to it. In recent decades, some anti-abortion organizations and politicians who oppose legal abortion in cases of rape have advanced claims that pregnancy very rarely arises from rape, and that the practical relevance of such exceptions to abortion law is therefore limited or non-existent.
Rape-pregnancy incidence
Estimates of the numbers of pregnancies from rape vary widely. Recent estimates suggest that rape conception happens between 25,000 and 32,000 times each year in the U.S.In a 1996 three-year longitudinal study of more than 4,000 American women, physician Melisa Holmes estimated from data from her study that forced sexual intercourse causes over 32,000 pregnancies in the United States each year. Physician Felicia H. Stewart and economist James Trussell estimated that the 333,000 assaults and rapes reported in the US in 1998 caused about 25,000 pregnancies, and up to 22,000 of those pregnancies could have been prevented by prompt medical treatment, such as emergency contraception. Other analyses indicate a much lower rate. The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, a charity based in Washington, D.C., reached a much lower figure calculated using estimates from the Justice Department's 2005 National Crime Victimization Survey. The network took that survey's annual average of 64,080 rapes committed in 2004 and 2005 and applies the 5 percent pregnancy rate to reach an estimate of 3,204 pregnancies a year from rape.
Rate
A 1996 study of 44 cases of rape-related pregnancy estimated that in the United States, the pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age. A 1987 study also found a 5% pregnancy rate from rape among 18- to 24-year-old college students in the US. A 2005 study placed the rape-related pregnancy rate at around 3–5%.A study of Ethiopian adolescents who reported being raped found that 17% subsequently became pregnant, and rape crisis centres in Mexico reported the figure the rate of pregnancy from rape at 15–18%. Estimates of rape-related pregnancy rates may be inaccurate since the crime is under-reported, resulting in some pregnancies from rape not being recorded as such, or alternately, social pressure may mean some rapes are not reported if no pregnancy results.
Most studies suggest that conception rates are independent of whether insemination is due to rape or consensual sex.
Some analysts have suggested that the rate of conception may be higher from insemination due to rape. Psychologist Robert L. Smith states that some studies have reported "unusually high rates of conception following rape". He cites a paper by C.A. Fox and Beatrice Fox, reporting that biologist Alan Sterling Parkes had speculated in personal correspondence that "there is a high conception rate in rape, where hormonal release, due to fear or anger, could produce reflex ovulation". Smith also cites veterinary scientist Wolfgang Jöchle, who "proposed that rape may induce ovulation in human females". Literary scholar Jonathan Gottschall and economist Tiffani Gottschall argued in a 2003 Human Nature article that previous studies of rape-pregnancy statistics were not directly comparable to pregnancy rates from consensual intercourse, because the comparisons were largely uncorrected for such factors as the use of contraception. Adjusting for these factors, they estimated that rapes are about twice as likely to result in pregnancies as "consensual, unprotected penile-vaginal intercourse". They discuss a variety of possible explanations and advance the hypothesis that rapists tend to target victims with biological "cues of high fecundity" or subtle indications of ovulation.
In contrast, psychologists Tara Chavanne and Gordon Gallup Jr., found that women in the ovulatory phase of their menstrual cycle reduce risk-taking behaviors, which could theoretically reduce the likelihood of rape during fertile periods. Anthropologist Daniel Fessler disputed these findings, saying, "analysis of conception rates reveals that the probability of conception following rape does not differ from that following consensual coitus".
Sociobiological theories of rape pregnancy
and evolutionary psychologists have hypothesized that causing pregnancy by rape may be a mating strategy in humans, as a way for males to ensure the survival of their genes by passing them on to future generations. Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer are key popularizers of this hypothesis. They assert that most rape victims are women of childbearing age and that many cultures treat rape as a crime against the victim's husband. They state that rape victims suffer less emotional distress when they are subjected to more violence, and that married women and women of childbearing age experience greater psychological distress after a rape than do girls, single women or post-menopausal women. Rape-pregnancy rates are crucial in evaluating these theories, because a high or low pregnancy rate from rape would determine whether such adaptations are favored or disfavored by natural selection.Some anthropologists and evolutionary theorists have challenged the view that rape is an adaptive mating strategy. Feminist scholars argue that sexual violence is better understood as a byproduct of social structures rather than an evolved reproductive tactic. For example, anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday has documented significant cross-cultural variation in the prevalence of rape, suggesting that sexual violence correlates more strongly with social factors like male dominance and militarism than with evolutionary imperatives. In societies with egalitarian gender norms, she found rape to be rare or absent, undermining claims that it is a universal or biologically selected behavior.
Similarly, evolutionary biologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has emphasized the importance of female reproductive agency in human evolution, arguing that cooperative childrearing and mutual mate selection, rather than coercion, were central to early human reproductive success. These perspectives suggest that rape is not an evolved strategy, but a socially contingent behavior that arises under certain cultural and institutional conditions.
Statutory rape, incest and underage pregnancy
In 1995–1996, the journal Family Planning Perspectives published a study by the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual health research and policy organization, on statutory rape and resulting pregnancies. It drew on other research to conclude that "at least half of all babies born to minor women are fathered by adult men", and that "although relatively small proportions of 13–14-year-olds have had intercourse, those who become sexually active at an early age are especially likely to have experienced coercive sex: Seventy-four percent of women who had intercourse before age 14 and 60% of those who had sex before age 15 report having had a forced sexual experience". Because of difficulties in bringing such cases to trial, however, "data from the period 1975–1978 ... indicate that, on average, only 413 men were arrested annually for statutory rape in California, even though 50,000 pregnancies occurred among underage women in 1976 alone". In that state, it was found that two thirds of babies born to school-age mothers were fathered by adult men.Sexual abuse early in life can lead young women to feel a lack of control over their sexual lives, decrease their future likelihood of using contraceptives such as condoms, and increase their chances of becoming pregnant or acquiring sexually transmitted infections. A 2007 paper by Child Trends examined studies from 2000 to 2006 to identify links between sexual abuse and teenage pregnancy, starting with Blinn-Pike et al.'s 2002 metastudy of 15 studies since 1989. It found that childhood sexual abuse has a "significant association" with adolescent pregnancy. Direct connections have been demonstrated both by retrospective studies examining antecedents to reported pregnancies and prospective studies, which track the lives of sex abuse victims and "can be helpful for determining causality". The more severe forms of abuse, such as rape and incest, entail a greater risk of adolescent pregnancy. Although some researchers suggest that pregnancy could be a choice made to escape a "bad situation", it may also be "a direct result of unwanted intercourse", which one study found to be the case for about 13% of participants in a Texas parenting program.
In Nicaragua, between 2000 and 2010, around 172,500 births were recorded for girls under 14, representing around 13% of the 10.3 million births during that period. These were attributed to poverty, laws forbidding abortion for rape and incest, lack of access to justice, and beliefs held in the culture and legal system. A 1992 study in Peru found that 90% of babies delivered to mothers aged 12–16 were conceived through rape, typically by a father, stepfather, or other close relative. In 1991 in Costa Rica, the figure was similar, with 95% of adolescent mothers under 15 having become pregnant through rape.
Many of the youngest documented birth mothers in history experienced precocious puberty and were impregnated as a result of rape, including incest. The youngest, Peruvian Lina Medina, was impregnated when she was four and had a live birth in 1939, at age five.