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Rape victims cannot get pregnant

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Duck

Posted: Aug 20 2012, 10:56 PM

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We don't have a rightwing religious/political moron board so it goes in here. In todays Guardian...people really vote for this asshat BECAUSE of his stance..not sure who's worse but I am sure the planet would be better off without them on it.

QUOTE

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-h-wo...medical-concept

'Legitimate rape' � a medieval medical concept

The idea that rape victims cannot get pregnant is a very old medical theory

Todd Akin apparently believes the body can suppress conception or cause miscarriage after rape. Historically, it was widely thought a woman could only conceive if she had an orgasm. Photograph: KTVI

Todd Akin, the Republican candidate for senate in Missouri, said in an interview released this weekend that he did not support abortion for rape victims because:

"If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

The idea that rape victims cannot get pregnant has long roots. The legal position that pregnancy disproved a claim of rape appears to have been instituted in the UK sometime in the 13th century. One of the earliest British legal texts, Fleta, has a clause in the first book of the second volume stating that:

"If, however, the woman should have conceived at the time alleged in the appeal, it abates, for without a woman's consent she could not conceive."

This was a long-lived legal argument. Samuel Farr's Elements of Medical Jurisprudence contained the same idea as late as 1814:

"For without an excitation of lust, or the enjoyment of pleasure in the venereal act, no conception can probably take place. So that if an absolute rape were to be perpetrated, it is not likely she would become pregnant."

This "absolute rape" is not quite the same as Akin's "legitimate rape". Akin seems to be suggesting that the body suppresses conception or causes a miscarriage, while the earlier idea of Farr relates specifically to the importance of orgasm. Through the medieval and early modern period it was widely thought, by lay people as well as doctors, that women could only conceive if they had an orgasm.

The biological basis for this idea is what the historian Thomas Laqueur has termed the "one sex system". The one sex system suggests that women's reproductive organs are fundamentally based on men's reproductive organs, so the vagina is represented as an inverted penis, the ovaries are testes and so on. Women had "cooler" constitutions, and therefore lacked the heat or force to drive the gonads out of the body, to convert ovaries to testes.

Thinking of the sexual organs as mirrors of each other obviously led to questions about the existence of a female "seed" or ejaculate. There was a disagreement about the roles of male and female seed � did they mingle to create the offspring, or did they contribute different things? Whatever the female seed contributed to conception, it was thought necessary, and so in theory a female orgasm was as important as a male orgasm.

Not everyone agreed with this interpretation. Helkiah Crooke, in his 17th century anatomy book Microcosmographia suggested that women's sexual organs were not simply inverted versions of men's, and said that a woman's orgasm was not always needed, although conception was much more likely, and a pregnancy much more secure, if she had one.

Generally, though, the idea that a women had to orgasm in order to conceive (although not necessarily at exactly the same time as her male partner) was widespread in popular thought and medical literature in the medieval and early modern period. By logical extension, then, if a woman became pregnant, she must have experienced orgasm, and therefore could not have been the victim of an "absolute rape".

Medical theories of sex, reproduction and conception changed gradually through the 18th century, so that by the 19th century the female orgasm was considered much less important for conception, and the female "seed" � if it even existed � was of less significance to the foetus. In popular culture the idea of the essential female orgasm lingered, and seems to still exist in a mutated form today

OMGBanana	Posted: Aug 20 2012, 11:41 PM
Banana Queen! Group: Members Posts: 1,650 Member No.: 122 Joined: 13-March 10	do these people not listen to themselfes??? who taught them biology, a time traveller from the 13th century??? if a woman could magically decide whether she wanted to get pregnant when having sex, there would be no unwanted children in this world, and no need for contraception... all rape is legitimate rape, all it really means is sex where one person involved did not consent to it.

Duck	Posted: Aug 21 2012, 03:07 PM
Advanced Member Group: Members Posts: 4,072 Member No.: 84 Joined: 11-June 09	Ah but if she gets pregnant its because she actually did consent to the intercourse or her body did and from that point on she/her life is secondary to the bunch of cells dividing through her unspoken consent...other wise she wouldn't have become pregnant...simples. Women say one thing and mean another.Thank goodness we have people like senator asshat to give us the true interpretation and treat women like the brood mares they are. Sarcasm off

Duck	Posted: Aug 21 2012, 03:41 PM
Advanced Member Group: Members Posts: 4,072 Member No.: 84 Joined: 11-June 09	Obama wades in on this one 'rape is rape' http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-574...s-rape-is-rape/

sherry	Posted: Aug 26 2012, 03:57 PM
sherry Group: Admin Posts: 30,685 Member No.: 25 Joined: 2-June 08	Let's hope the Americans aren't daft enough to vote for the moron Todd Akin then! It makes me wonder how he's gotten as far as he has and hasn't been locked up

Tomdog

Posted: Aug 26 2012, 04:25 PM

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QUOTE (sherry @ Aug 26 2012, 04:57 PM)

Let's hope the Americans aren't daft enough to vote for the moron Todd Akin then! It makes me wonder how he's gotten as far as he has and hasn't been locked up

You should look into the things mitt romney believes in and he's almost president!!!!

sherry	Posted: Aug 26 2012, 05:04 PM
sherry Group: Admin Posts: 30,685 Member No.: 25 Joined: 2-June 08	It just shows how great countries can go to pot.

Les

Posted: Aug 27 2012, 07:07 AM

I use a computer, therefore I am.

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QUOTE (Tomdog @ Aug 26 2012, 05:25 PM)

QUOTE (sherry @ Aug 26 2012, 04:57 PM)

Let's hope the Americans aren't daft enough to vote for the moron Todd Akin then! It makes me wonder how he's gotten as far as he has and hasn't been locked up

You should look into the things mitt romney believes in and he's almost president!!!!

Heaven help us if he does. And as for Atkin, my feeling is that he's pretty much shot himself in the .................... foot. End of career in politics I should imagine. People won't forget a pathetic view like that in a hurry. Of course, what he says owes far more to his lack of brain power than it does to religion.

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