Where exactly does this myth come from?

[bluestateguy]

That you can't get pregnant by being raped?

Perhaps the same place as the tall tale about Mikey from the Life cereal commercial choking to death from eating Pop Rocks and drinking Coke.

[liberal N proud]

1. Aikins mention of it is the first time I ever heard it.

[MichiganVote]

2. Wishful thinking on the part of white men who raped black female slaves

[rocktivity]

3. Myth? It makes perfect sense to me

After all, you can't get pregnant when you're menstruating, either!


rocktivity

[alphafemale]

4. That was a completely new one for me..

And growing up amid those fucking freaks I thought I'd learned all their fairy tales.

[JitterbugPerfume]

5. I don't know where it came from

but it has been around for a while.It is just another blame the victim meme.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

6. Middle ages.

It used to be believed if a woman did enjoy her mate she didn't produce a seed.

If she got pregnant from a rape, she wasn't raped.

Found a fast link explaining it a bit.

Only unmarried women could draw up contracts, wills, or borrow money. Any women could, according to criminal law, press charges for bodily harm, rape and insult, but in no other matter.

It must be noted that if she fell pregnant as the result of a rape, her suit was thrown out of court because, according to medieval biology, a woman had to secrete a seed to conceive and this only happened if she was sexually satisfied.

The laws on rape differed throughout Western Europe though. In England and France, it was a criminal act and punishable by blinding, castration or the putting to death of the rapist. (In the case of peasants, however, the penalty was usually a monetary fine.) A sure way of being pardoned was for the rapist to agree to marry his victim, and the courts encouraged such unions.
http://worldhistory.knowledge4africa.com/medieval/women.jsp

[lastlib]

7. GOP --the Mother of Lies

Where else would you expect it to come from??

[Warren Stupidity]

8. It comes from the god smacked.

[kestrel91316]

9. Either it's in the Bible, or RWers fabricated it out of whole cloth,

but that would mean they bore false witness and we know they are good Christians and would never do that, so I am quite sure it's in the Bible. There aren't any other possibilities.

[niyad]

10. stephen friend former PA state rep

who said, years ago, that a rape exception for abortion was not necessary because a woman who was raped secreted an enzyme that prevented her from getting pregnant

(just got done googling it)

[Care Acutely]

13. Wow. We should find a source for that and start collecting these

so that women, younger ones especially, start to understand how seriously ignorant these people are and how absolutely determined they are to return us all to our "natural" places.

[niyad]

15. I know DU'ers have links to that insane remark--it was one of them who reminded me several years

ago just who said it.

[nobodyspecial]

11. So when he claims, medical experts agree

He is referring to medieval physicians. Yeah, I guess that's where they want to take us.

[sammytko]

12. The Atlantic had a good article on this:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/08/a-canard-that-will-not-die-legitimate-rape-doesnt-cause-pregnancy/261303/

[Care Acutely]

14. I think it's quite simply that women are bad and dirty.

Every good republican man knows this, and much of their social theory revolves around it.

[luv_mykatz]

16. Uh, yeah, women are bad for having sex for any reason...

but, of course, men aren't.

I seem to remember a joke from the early days of the 1960's re-awakening of the women's rights movement, something along the lines of: if women started wearing suits of armor to prevent rape, men would just get a can opener, and then blame the woman anyway.

[Spirochete]

17. I'd never heard it before

No wonder these dickwads hate science: even when they do try to use it, they fuck it up.

[RedStateLiberal]

18. Sounds like motivated reasoning to me.

To justify being against abortion - even in the case of rape. There are no reasonable grounds to oppose abortion in the case of rape so they just make something up or repeat a justification and believe it regardless of reason or facts.

I have a feeling religion plays a part in this particular excuse. They can't accept the possibility that their God would allow a child to be conceived from such a violent act so they convince themselves that it's not possible or not real rape.