Since there are some wingnuts actually trying to defend this crap... the truth:
"Rape trauma as barrier to pregnancy has no scientific basis"
Excerpt:
"(Reuters) - The long-discredited notion that rape victims cannot become pregnant - a claim that pushed Republicans to repudiate one of their own U.S. Senate candidates on Monday - dates back centuries to when human reproduction was hardly understood.
But the medieval theory has surfaced in 21st century political discourse as a result of the U.S. abortion wars.
Writers from the Middle Ages and modern politicians alike have based their arguments on the idea that a trauma of the magnitude of rape can shut down the body's reproductive system.
The combination of misunderstanding and cherry-picked science even led some to conclude that a woman who says she was raped yet becomes pregnant must have been lying about the attack. Modern proponents of the claim repeat it despite empirical research showing that rape victims are at least as likely to become pregnant as women who have consensual sex, and possibly more likely....
...the stress that reduces fertility is the chronic kind that occurs over months or years, not the acute trauma of a rape.
"A woman who is raped at a vulnerable time in her menstrual cycle is as likely to conceive and retain a pregnancy as a woman who was voluntarily attempting pregnancy," said ACOG's Levy. "There's absolutely no validity to any sort of theory that the trauma related to rape - or to any thing else for that matter - would shut down ovulation that has already begun."
Yahoo News
At least The Onion has two excellent articles in his defense:
I Misspoke—What I Meant To Say Is 'I Am Dumb As Dog Shit And I Am A Terrible Human Being'
Excerpt:
"So let me take this opportunity to be very specific about what I meant Sunday, which was this: I am not a competent or respectable politician; I am, essentially, a subhuman monster of a prick, a prick as profoundly insensitive as he is monumentally unintelligent in every respect; somebody should apply dozens of layers of duct tape to my mouth every morning so that words are not able to exit my large, dumb, misogynist, imbecilic mouth at any point; I make the planet worse; I don’t know jack shit about any of the topics I spoke about in that interview, or about any topics at all, really; I should apologize every day to the women of the world, but doing so would most likely be an exercise in futility given my rock-bottom intellect and my complete and utter lack of human decency; I am, in no uncertain terms, not even worth the time it took you to read this.
That’s what I meant to say. Sorry for the confusion."
And: "Pregnant Woman Relieved To Learn Her Rape Was Illegitimate" The Onion
"LITCHFIELD, CT—Though she was initially upset following the brutal sexual assault last month that left her pregnant, victim Martha Byars told reporters she was relieved Sunday to learn from Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) that her ability to conceive her unwanted child proves she was not, in fact, legitimately raped.
“Being violently coerced into having sex was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, so I take comfort in knowing it wasn’t actually rape,” Byars said of the vicious encounter in which she was accosted in an alleyway by a stranger, pinned to the ground, and penetrated against her will for 25 minutes. “It was absolutely horrific—I felt violated in the worst way imaginable—but thanks to Congressman Akin, I now realize it must, at some level, have been consensual after all.”
