Todd Akin, Republican candidate for the Missouri Senate seat, revived this medieval theory about rape and conception over this past weekend. Vanessa Hoggie gives this old, discredited, but still-alive-in-some-medieval-circles theory a thorough look, on The Guardian's blog.
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."
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