By now you’ve likely heard -- and perhaps felt your jaw drop open over -- Todd Akin’s  recent interview, in which the Republican Senate candidate from Missouri admitted that he believes abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape, because “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” If you follow that logic to its end, Akin means: Ladies, if you say you got pregnant after being raped, you’re probably lying about the rape part.

Of course the scientific facts are far from on Akin’s side, which should be embarrassing for a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. While it may be true that  female ducks have evolved in such a way that they now have a biological anti-pregnancy response to forced sex, human beings most definitely have not. As the Washington Post’s  Sarah Kliff notes, many scientific studies have proven that the you-only-conceive-if-aroused theory is complete bunk. In fact, one study from 2003 even showed that rape victims may be more likely to get pregnant than individuals on the whole.