Brutal Nazi experiment data used by wingnuts for "legitimate rape theory"

[SaintLouisBlues]

snip:

"In supporting his claim about trauma and ovulation, Mecklenburg cited experiments conducted in Nazi death camps.

The Nazis tested this hypothesis "by selecting women who were about to ovulate and sending them to the gas chambers, only to bring them back after their realistic mock-killing, to see what the effect this had on their ovulatory patterns. An extremely high percentage of these women did not ovulate."

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch article:

Akin appears to have picked up conclusions from 1972 article now hotly disputed

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/akin-appears-to-have-picked-up-conclusions-from-article-now/article_f267f02f-c9eb-515d-9a42-201de9b92d64.html

[appleannie1]

1. The starvation they were enduring might have more to do with why they did not ovulate than trauma.

[joeybee12]

8. +1...these women had been starved and abused for a long time...

And many bodily functions were out of whack due to that, not because of ONE incident...what filthy assholes these people are.

[nobodyspecial]

10. That's exactly what I was thinking

Anorexic females and those with very little body fat do not menstruate, period.

[Lionessa]

2. Even if trauma/stress does effect ovulation, does not mean that a rape won't

happen during the critical fertile days. Though this may be something they used to dream up the ideas spouting by Akin, I think it would be much wiser if any and all media would do what we do here, demand his sources. Question his ideas and demand his sources for his data upon which he's making those claims.

If it is ultimately based on Nazi experiments, that'll come out.


All that said, having been a woman all my life, and having a daughter, of course stress and trauma effects a woman's cycle. That however doesn't provide some "shut down" if a rape occurs during fertility days of a cycle, if the egg's already dropped, then ovulation has occurred and pregnancy is likely.

[Kablooie]

4. The article lists several sources of that information.

The primary source was a 1972 article by Fred Mecklinburg that has been used as evidence ever since by the anti-abortion gang.
Part of this article cited Nazi experiments as evidence.
Other sources are also listed.

[Lionessa]

5. The article does, but Akins has not said this is where his misinformation is from,

and imo doesn't sound like the explanation he gave at all, wherein he seems to suggest that a woman has an ability to refuse a sperm even if she is fertile, which is related to ovulation but not the same at all.

I just prefer legitimately considered connections or evidence from the speaker that this is where he got his misinformation. What you're presenting just isn't hitting the nail on the head at all.

[AngryAmish]

3. At the end of WWII, most women in eastern Germany were forcibly raped

They had to set up government run abortion centers.


Under this theory there would be no need for these abortion centers.

Idiot.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Or there's the more recent Bosnian mass rapes, and resulting children

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/bosnias-rape-babies-abandoned-by-their-families-forgotten-by-the-state-519257.html

Women (or girls - one covered in the article was only 16) who were clearly heavily traumatised, but still conceived.

[Cleita]

12. The mother of a friend of mine was one of those East German women.

Besides that they were starved. In this woman's case she was given a loaf of bread a week as pay where she worked.

[DesertRat]

6. OMG

[Nuclear Unicorn]

7. In a wholly unrelated conversation several years ago, then-boyfriend hubby told me

a lot of medical info was gleaned from Nazi experiments, i.e. the effects of deepwater hypothermia.

This is obviously NOT a defense for Akin -- or the Nazis, if it must be said -- but the prevailing mindset was: many people suffered; to discard valid data that could be used to save other lives would not honor their suffering.

Of course, at this point I think Akin is just blowing smoke to save his own hide.

[yardwork]

14. I don't think so. The Nazi "experiments" weren't valid scientific studies. They were torture.

I've never heard that anything useful has come from these sadistic episodes. They were certainly not experiments in any scientifically accepted meaning of the term. No useful data.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

15. FWIW, If I may offer --

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/naziexp.html

What my husband referred to at the time is discussed in section 3.a.i.

It's a horrifying read, as well it should be.

[msanthrope]

16. Hypothermia studies, possibly, Phosgene studies, maybe....

That's part of the absolute horror, the unconscionable evil of the regime. Most 'experiments' were not only bad ethics, but bad science. But, there might be something to one or two of them.

An article I read a while back....

http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/NaziMedEx.html

[Nuclear Unicorn]

17. Still, it's one of those things that makes a person sick just suggesting it n/t

[msanthrope]

18. It's absolutely repugnant, on every level. You cannot unsee the blood. nt

[cthulu2016]

11. Is "brutal nazi experiment" like "forcible rape"?

Seems to be an unnecessary adjective in there

[Auntie Bush]

13. Why is Akin reading Nazis torture documents?

Is this what he calls reading for pleasure?

[SaintLouisBlues]

19. Not just Akins

PA wingnuts spouted off on this in the past. Plenty, I'm sure, believe it but aren't dumb enough to say it outloud.