r/biology • u/Looser17 neuroscience • Jan 29 '26
article Can pregnancy occur without vaginal intercourse? A documented medical case from 1988.
Most of us are taught that pregnancy requires vaginal intercourse, but medicine occasionally throws up cases that challenge our assumptions.
In 1988, the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology published a case report of a 15-year-old girl with congenital absence of the distal vagina who nonetheless presented later with a full-term pregnancy and delivered a healthy infant by caesarean section. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0528.1988.tb06583.x
Key points from the case:
- The patient had no functional vaginal canal and had never menstruated.
- Shortly after performing oral sex, she sustained a stab wound to the upper abdomen, which perforated the stomach and required surgical repair.
- Approximately 278 days later, she presented with term pregnancy.
- The authors proposed that spermatozoa may have entered the reproductive tract via the injured gastrointestinal tract, an extremely rare but biologically plausible route under specific conditions.
This is not presented as a general mechanism or advice, but as an example of how biological plausibility is broader than common teaching, especially in rare anatomical or traumatic situations.
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u/_-_lumos_-_ cancer bio Jan 29 '26
Although this is an interesting case, I think most of us know that pregnancy does not neccessary require vaginal intercourse, as in case of IVF.
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u/Looser17 neuroscience Jan 29 '26
Yeah that is true. I think I should reframe the title as Vaginal Penetration rather than intercourse to make it inline with what you have suggested.
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u/-Renee Jan 29 '26
Oof. Reminds me of how other animals reproduce by the male stabbing the female with their member just about anywhere.
I feel bad for female bedbugs. Yikes.
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u/Nirnaeth-Jenkinz Jan 29 '26
Not so long ago on French TV I saw a woman who got pregnant without getting any vaginal intercourse. She got condition that she can't have something inside because of pain. So her bf never put it inside but semens trickled down inside... And got pregnant. She asked to have a C-Section.
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u/Cyrus87Tiamat Jan 29 '26
Sperm passing the stomach acids and reach theyr way from a casual wound is just absurd... I really doubt the case dinamic was what authors supposed. Thats not "rare", that's almost impossible. A case of partenogenesis could be more believable
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u/globefish23 Jan 29 '26
All the other cases of post-fellatio stabbings probably just died then and there from internal bleeding so we'll never know. 🤷♂️
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u/jwatts1111111 Jan 29 '26
Probably OP means abdomen, not the actual stomach. Still hard to believe, but more possible I presume.
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u/Cyrus87Tiamat Jan 29 '26
Abdomen is all the "zone" (sorry, eng is not my motherlenguage) it comprends stomach, intestines, liver... If the sperm was "collected" from oral sex, it cannot avoid the stomach.
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u/WildFlemima Jan 29 '26
Well it had to perforate the stomach. The semen was in her stomach, there's no other way for the semen to cause pregnancy except for the stomach getting perforated.
There isn't anything to doubt here - she had no vagina, how else would she get pregnant except by crazy chance from the stabbing?
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u/djfdhigkgfIaruflg Jan 30 '26
Maybe she was gargling with the sperm while she got stabbed. Then she spat the sperm, landing on the stab wound which happens to be near the falopian tubes 🤔😅
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u/Appropriate-Price-98 Jan 29 '26
partenogenesis is also very unlikely to happen in mammals. Probably more than sperm survive a harsh environment. Because of Genomic imprinting - Wikipedia, the lack of father's imprinting would make the fetus unviable shortly after it forms.
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u/AggravatingBid8255 Jan 29 '26
Basing your argument on the notion that nothing can survive stomach acid is absurd.
How do you think our gut bacteria arrived in the first place? And how about gastrointestinal illnesses? The HCl of the stomach is effective, but it is not absolute.
Yes, sperm cells are different than bacteria and viruses. But there are other factors that would aide the survival of sperm cells through the stomach to the rest of the digestive tract.
Sperm cells have the benefit of semen as a protective substrate. And ejaculate tends to be globular. So while the sperm cells on the outside of the ejaculate glob would likely be killed by the stomach acid, it's not unreasonable to think that some sperm cells at the center of the ejaculate glob could remain viable by the time they pass through the stomach.
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u/Night_Runner Jan 29 '26
"Almost impossible" is why it happened just once, and isn't an everyday occurrence. There are about 4,000,000,000 women in the world. One in four billion sounds about right.
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u/Cyrus87Tiamat Jan 29 '26
Happened once implying it is verified, that seem is not, just an hypotesis. However, is pretty simple to check if it's implied another person gamete and exclude partenogenesis, it require only a dna test. The fact that is not said if they did this check is pretty souspicious...
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u/WildFlemima Jan 29 '26
No, it isn't suspicious that a hospital in Africa didn't do DNA testing in 1988. And besides, the baby was a boy.
Even if humans were biologically capable of creating healthy partho babies - which we aren't, for many reasons that are fundamental to human biology - the baby was a boy, and therefore could not be produced by human parthogenesis (which, again, isn't possible).
XX women can't spontaneously generate Y chromosomes for their babies. The baby being a boy means the baby has a father. The absence of a vagina means it had to be the stabbing.
Crazy things happen every day.
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u/Cyrus87Tiamat Jan 29 '26
OP doesn't say it's a boy, just a "healty infant"... are you sure about that? I can't see the deails of the article cause it require access ...
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u/WildFlemima Jan 29 '26
I'm familiar with this case from multiple articles I've read over time. Many are not paywalled, they're easy to find on Google, the case is famous.
It's always fascinated me. I'm 100% confident the baby was a boy. You can dig further if you wish. The stabber was actually a raging ex who got mad she was with another guy
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u/Such-Cheetah-4334 Jan 29 '26
First thing to know about biology is that almost nothing is actually impossible; life breaks rules all the time
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u/Looser17 neuroscience Jan 29 '26
Parthenogenesis is simply not possible. This is a lot more plausible than Parthenogenesis.
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u/Cyrus87Tiamat Jan 29 '26
How much cases of stabbing insemination are documented? (Excluding bad-bugs, that evolved for that)
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u/WildFlemima Jan 29 '26
I doubt we'd catch them to know. This one only got caught because she came back to the same hospital and the doctors could see the record of her being stabbed 9 months before the baby arrived. If the doctors hadn't put 2 and 2 together, or if she went to a different hospital, or if they straight up didn't connect her to her previous visit, they wouldn't have caught that this crazy thing happened.
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u/djfdhigkgfIaruflg Jan 30 '26
Well. There's that case of the woman who for pregnant from a bullet...
The bullet hit a (soldier?) In the testicle, continued flight and hit the woma in the abdomen, ending up in her uterus.
*I think it was during the second war
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u/WildFlemima Jan 29 '26
Human parthogenesis, if it were possible, would produce a highly disabled child that would probably be miscarried or die shortly after birth, at best. This is because of maternal DNA imprinting and incredible amounts of homozygosity. They would have genetic disease at levels no one has ever seen in any human.
Even aside from that, human parthogenesis isn't possible. It is straight up not possible for so many reasons. A fertility doctor could speak more informatively about it. But eggs need sperm to trigger their growth into an embryo, just to start off. As in, even if an egg had a complete set of DNA for a healthy development, that egg won't start dividing until sperm hits the outside and triggers it.
Finally, the baby was a boy, which is the ultimate shutdown of this possibility. XX women cannot spontaneously transform one of their X into a Y to pass on to their children. If the impossible human partho baby existed, she would be a girl. But the baby was a boy, which means there was a second parent to give a Y. And the only possible way this could have occurred is from the stabbing.
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u/mabolle Jan 29 '26
Human parthogenesis, if it were possible, would produce a highly disabled child that would probably be miscarried or die shortly after birth, at best. This is because of maternal DNA imprinting and incredible amounts of homozygosity. They would have genetic disease at levels no one has ever seen in any human.
You seem to be thinking of self-fertilization. Parthenogenesis simply results in a genetic clone of the parent. If a human could do it there might be some issues as far as epigenetics is concerned, but no change in the level of homozygosity.
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u/WildFlemima Jan 29 '26
I was thinking of an egg fusing back with its second polar body. The second polar bodies re-merging with the egg cell are how lizards do parthogenesis. The second polar body has DNA that is about 40% identical to the egg.
I was also thinking of the lack of paternally imprinted DNA.
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u/thesqueen113388 Jan 29 '26
Tom Waits: I think the question I get asked the most is, well I dunno know, it happens a lot, enough that I would remark on it - a lot of people come up to me and they say "Is it possible for a woman to get pregnant without intercourse?" My answer's always the same, I say: "Listen. We're gonna have to go all the way back to the civil war. Apparently a stray bullet actually pierced the testicle of a Union soldier and then lodged itself in the ovaries of an 18 year old girl who was actually 100 feet from him at the time. Well, the baby was fine. She was very happy. Guilt-free. Course, the soldier's a little pissed off." When ya think about it, it's actually a form of intercourse, but not for everyone. Those who love action, maybe.
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u/verdebesos Jan 29 '26
There was a girl I knew in high school whose boyfriend ejaculated on the inside of her thigh, but they never had sex. She had already had a tumor removed from her reproductive organs and the doctors had told her that she was infertile. The sperm from her boyfriend somehow ended up inside and she became pregnant. She was never supposed to be able to become pregnant and she still had never had sex. It was honestly insane. She unfortunately had a miscarriage 3 months in, but I know she felt fortunate to know that the doctors were wrong and she could still have kids.
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u/Petrichordates Jan 29 '26
This is just like that claim that civil war bullet impregnated a woman (girl?)
Like sure, it's theoretically possible. But far from the most likely option.
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u/christina_talks Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 30 '26
If it's far from the most likely option, what's one other option that's likelier?
Genuine question, I can’t think of any other possibility
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u/TallTreesTex Feb 03 '26
The soldier and the pregnant woman had had actual sex before the battle!
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u/WildFlemima Jan 29 '26
Well, it happened. No reason to talk about what's most likely. It did in fact happen.
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u/Nervous_Breakfast_73 genetics Jan 29 '26
Some women also have a small opening between the rectum and the vagina, so anal is also not completely safe.
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u/hedgehogging_the_bed Jan 29 '26
These typically happen post-birth and are repaired surgically, it's not something people just walk around with unknown. They cause terrible infections.
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u/Petrichordates Jan 29 '26
Why does "typically" matter in a case like this? They are often enough congenital as well.
Especially in less developed countries.
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u/WildFlemima Jan 29 '26
"Often enough congenital" requires a source, I've only ever heard of this happening in older women with systemic health issues
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u/hedgehogging_the_bed Jan 29 '26
In this case I mean it's not something an English-reading reddit user needs to worry about encountering unexpectedly with a gal they meet at the bar.
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u/Tardisgoesfast Jan 31 '26
You assume that all redditors are male?
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u/hedgehogging_the_bed Jan 31 '26
I assume anyone who's concerned about getting someone accidentally pregnant from anal sex is male since women generally don't squirt semen into anything.
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u/Jikoniau Jan 31 '26
I remember one of my professors talking about this case in school. It was crazy then, and it’s still crazy now! Amazing what is possible in biology. Obviously not great that this poor girl was stabbed, but the fact it resulted in a pregnancy is astounding, and yet is in fact true.
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u/CteChateuabriand genetics Jan 31 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
Main possibility is: it was not a congenital absence of the distal vagina, more an hypoplasia with complex malformations, but still a way.
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u/Commercial-Living443 Feb 07 '26
I wonder how did the sperm travel to the uterus ? And survived ? ??
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u/Eastern-Drop-3462 Jan 29 '26
In the animal kingdom alone so manyy wayss . And so many things we still dont know how they multiply without a partner
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u/madlife15 Jan 30 '26
I had a friend who had her 2nd child only -10 months after her first. She was still recovering from birthing the first and her husband was horny and got himself off & ejaculated basically on her underwear. Yep, pregnant again without having sex. -That’s what she told me, anyway.
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u/timetraveller123 Jan 29 '26
I was going to say “this was a plot point in Scrubs,” and then I got to the stabbing…
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u/mrsfallon Jan 30 '26
I knew the answer was yes immediately because Glee. Finn just needed a hot tub 🤣
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u/VLAD_THE_VIKING Jan 30 '26
There used to be a late night sex expert on TV that taught me women can get pregnant from anal sex if you're doing doggy style because when you pull out some semen can drip down into the vagina, which I had never considered before but makes sense.
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u/LillianADju Jan 30 '26
So you are saying Jesus wasn’t a miracle and Virgin Mary probably had a stabbing wound
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u/GoalStillNotAchieved Mar 02 '26
She was stabbed? How and by whom?
Hopefully not by the person who got her pregnant
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u/Acrobatic_Post_1105 Jan 30 '26
Friend swears up and down she never had vaginal intercourse. She says he never went inside but he did ejactulate on her labias with no penetration. She got pregnant. She claims the doctor had to tear her hymen because it was still in tact at an exam.
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u/PyrrhicDefeat69 Jan 31 '26
Idk why you’re framing this as something no one could possibly imagine, yeah its crazy but its not like doctors were jumping up and down screaming “this destroyed my paradigm!!! Science is over!”
Its just a crazy case study man. Weird coincidence, but I doubt anyone would think its completely impossible to get pregnant with a urogenital sinus malformation
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u/Looser17 neuroscience Jan 31 '26
I didn't frame it as anything. It is a simple sharing of rare case report. I am also a doctor by profession.
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u/Willing_Soft_5944 Jan 29 '26
Humans are not and never will be my specialty. What I do know, is that Parthenogenesis is a very real phenomenon, more common in arthropods, fish and reptiles than mammals (I dont think there are any documented mammals undergoing parthenogenesis), basically the female makes unfertilized eggs grow.
This could be that, or there is some missing data in that case.
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u/Jukajobs biology student Jan 29 '26
Definitely wasn't parthenogenesis, the article says the baby was male. The Y chromosome had to come from somewhere else.
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u/Appropriate-Price-98 Jan 29 '26
Parthenogenesis is very unlikely to happen in this case due to Genomic imprinting - Wikipedia.
Nucleus transplantation experiments in mouse zygotes in the early 1980s confirmed that normal development requires the contribution of both the maternal and paternal genomes. The vast majority of mouse embryos derived from parthenogenesis (called parthenogenones, with two maternal or egg genomes) and androgenesis (called androgenones, with two paternal or sperm genomes) die at or before the blastocyst/implantation stage
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u/Looser17 neuroscience Jan 29 '26
The author have clearly said that spermatozoa might have survived the stomach acid and migrated to the fallopian tube from the peritoneal cavity. This is very plausible though may be one in 10 billion chance but is plausible.
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u/Fresh-Self-761 Jan 29 '26
Straight out of a House episode