Texas’s abortion law restricts abortions to only where the mother’s life is endangered.
A non-peer reviewed letter to JAMA attempted to estimated the number of rapes and the percent of rapes that result in pregnancy to reach an estimate for the number of pregnancies resulting from rape.
I am not commenting on their number of rapes. It may or may not be accurate, but whatever the number all rapes are bad.
An egg is viable for about one day, but sperm can remain viable in a woman for five days. This means that in 5 out of 30 days (17%) rape could possibly lead to pregnancy.
The odds of an ejaculation actually fertilizing an egg during one ovulation is approximately 56% (3)(4).
The odds of a fertilized egg actually implanting itself in the uterus is 30% (2)(5)
The odds of a fertilize implanted egg surviving through eight weeks is 76% (3)(5)
This implies that the percent of rapes that result in pregnancy should be approximately .17x.56x.30x.76 = .021 or 2.1% not their 12%.
2. Wilcox, A. J., Weinberg, C. R., & Baird, D. D. (1995). Timing of sexual intercourse in relation to ovulation—effects on the probability of conception, survival of the pregnancy, and sex of the baby. New England Journal of Medicine, 333(23), 1517-1521.
3. Schwartz, D., MacDonald, P. D. M., & Heuchel, V. (1980). Fecundability, coital frequency and the viability of ova. Population Studies, 34(2), 397-400.
4. Wilcox, A. J., Dunson, D., & Baird, D. D. (2000). The timing of the “fertile window” in the menstrual cycle: day specific estimates from a prospective study. Bmj, 321(7271), 1259-1262.
5. Boklage, C. E. (1990). Survival probability of human conceptions from fertilization to term. Int J Fertil, 35(2), 75.
