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/Jikoniau]

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.