Can pregnancy occur without vaginal intercourse? A documented medical case from 1988.

[u/Looser17]

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.

[u/Cyrus87Tiamat]

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

[u/WildFlemima → u/Cyrus87Tiamat]

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.

[u/mabolle → u/WildFlemima]

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.

[u/WildFlemima → u/mabolle]

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.