The Math on 'Legitimate Rape' and Pregnancy  By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Elsewhere on the site, James Hamblin applies
some disinfectant to the notion that the female body can
magically "shut that whole thing down":  In light of the
pervasiveness of the abortion conversation, it's worth reviewing
what we know about this aspect of reproductive physiology. 
From a holistic perspective, one might hypothesize that a
woman's body could respond to the extreme stress and trauma of
enduring rape in such a way that she would be physiologically
more likely to miscarry (or not to conceive at all). There is a
multi-million dollar alternative reproductive health market
aimed at optimizing an environment for conception -- sexual
positions, foods, colors, aromas, feng shui -- so there could be
something to a theory that the other, much darker end of that
spectrum functions analogously.   But that doesn't hold, to any
relevant degree. A widely-cited 1996 study from the American
Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology sampled over 4,00