Jacqueline Murray has a piece called "Todd Akin’s views are, literally, medieval" in which she demonstrates that Akin's view that women's bodies magically prevent pregnancy when they are raped would have fit right in with medieval views on the subject.
The notion that a woman’s body will experience different biological responses to intercourse depending on whether the sex act is consensual or coerced can be traced back to the Middle Ages. At this time the scientific and medical texts of Greek and Roman antiquity were being translated and appropriated by European doctors and philosophers, all of whom, without exception, were not only male but also members of the Roman Catholic clergy. Thus, science and medicine were given a distinctly ideological and theological spin.
The medieval roots of Mr. Akin’s comments lie in the scientific belief that a woman needed to experience sexual pleasure just as much as a man in order for conception to occur. Clearly, in a loving relationship this would be the norm. The old “Lie back and think of England” view, that suggested female sexual pleasure was unnecessary, and perhaps even unseemly, is from a much later time.
The corollary is that without female pleasure no conception would occur. Thus, according to the 12th-century philosopher William of Conches, “prostitutes who have sexual relations for money alone, and who take no pleasure during the sex act, do not conceive.” They would, however, get pregnant from sex with a lover.
Like Mr. Akin, William of Conche also considered the situation of rape, confidently asserting that there would be no offspring, unless somehow the woman “enjoyed” it. “Although in rape the act is distressing to begin with, at the end, given the weakness of the flesh, it is not without its pleasures.”
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