In trying to speak off the cuff and reduce complex ideas to short sound bites of the sort required for most televised appearances, I mis-spoke and failed to make clear the true intent of my words. I never meant to speak harshly or demean women who have suffered the incredible, unimaginable trauma of violent rape. I pray for these women, pray that they may someday find peace and understand how they may someday once again make themselves whole. I pray that they have learned a valuable lesson and can perhaps even grow from the experience, take from it a strength and moral character that might serve them as a guiding light in the future. Steel, after all, takes its strength from fire. So, I think, can women. That is my hope.

I must speak to the ongoing attacks upon my medical "mischaracterization" of rape. Unfortunately, I used the word "legitimate" to define rape, and that was insensitive of me. I apologize from the bottom of my soul. Rape is an attack on a woman, but it is more than that. It is a violation of her sexuality, an attack not just upon her but upon her husband, her lover, any man who values that aspect of her. But I feel it is important here to clarify the greater point I was trying to make, a point that goes beyond the emotional and traumatic effect of a valid rape and speaks to its biology. I spoke of a woman's body "shutting down" in the event of rape, and this comment has been widely misconstrued. Opponents have spoken of misperceptions I have regarding "magical juices" and "countermeasures" that somehow prevent insemination in the event of a rape or rapelike event.

These characterizations are unfair. I am not speaking of magical fluids or countermeasures like those found in fighter jets. What I am speaking of is the fundamental biological working of a woman. Biologically speaking, women can only become pregnant if they are ovulating . Ovulation is a process controlled by what we refer to as a "woman's orgasm." The fact that a woman releases one egg upon an orgasm is nature's way of ensuring that she releases her eggs only to those individuals known to her, those individuals -- her lover, her husband -- with whom she wants to create a child. Since it is highly unlikely that a woman would orgasm during a traumatic rape, it is unlikely that she would become pregnant from it. This is the only point I was trying to make, and I apologize for not making it more clearly.

Obviously, though, and for this I am deeply regretful and apologetic, statistics do prove that I was incorrect in my assertion that very few women become pregnant through rape. I believe that I have seen numbers as high as 5 percent of all rape victims become pregnant. While I do not pretend to understand why 5 percent of all women who are raped experience an orgasm, and I will draw no assumption about what that might mean regarding the validity of her rape, I will suggest that perhaps there is a conversation there to be had. But it is not a conversation for me to lead. What I must do now is pray for all of these women, all of these women and the women who may follow them, their daughters and their sisters and their friends. I hope that we can put this unfortunate incident behind us and move on together to make this country as great as I know it can be. Thank you.

...Victims of statutory rape—say, a 13-year-old girl impregnated by a 30-year-old man—would be on their own. So would victims of incest if they’re over 18. And while “forcible rape” isn’t defined in the criminal code, the addition of the adjective seems certain to exclude acts of rape that don’t involve overt violence—say, cases where a woman is drugged or has a limited mental capacity...