"Sap my ass." Does that involve covering it IN sap? Can it be maple?

With all these virgins giving birth, how are we to know which one is the mother of Jeebuz 2.0? Will some sort of "Survivor" style contest be required to determine the TRUE Son Of God Redux?

Call me crazy, but I'm guessing pressure to claim immaculate conception may go back 2000 years or even more...

It speaks volumes about how we treat female sexuality in this country that so many young girls would claim to still be virgins when indisputable evidence to the contrary is staring everyone in the face.

At every wave, participants reported their history of vaginal intercourse (defined as a male inserting his penis in a woman’s vagina) and women reported their pregnancy history. We used these longitudinal data to classify women by their virginity status at the time of reported pregnancy. We defined virginity as consistent reporting of no history of vaginal intercourse. Women were classified as having virgin pregnancies if they reported a pregnancy before sexual debut. We classified the other women as non-virgins.

Of 7870 eligible women, 5340 reported a pregnancy, of whom 45 (0.8% of pregnant women) reported a virgin pregnancy (table 1⇓)

Data from 244 “born again virgins” who reported sex in an early wave but later recanted are not shown.

So, let's make a big conclusion about the 0.5% and ignore the 3% who later decided they were mistaken about the penis in their vagina event of earlier.

This is why it's good to link to the original publication when you're talking about a scientific result.

Or, the day when all news outlets forget the the British Medical Journal publishes an issue of humorous research topics every Christmas.

1 in 200 of all women? That's beyond an anomaly. Clearly people can self clone. Someone call science and let them know.

A little DNA testing of those claims (and all male relatives and acquaintences of the claimaints) might be interesting, if for no other reason than to figure out how far sperm can jump.

I also wonder if there were any independently medically verified intact hymens involved. That used to be the standard test for virginity. (Still is, in portions of the Muslim world.) For some reason, self-reporting of virginity hasn't always been considered completely reliable.

The "hymen" is a bullshit standard for virginity anytime, anywhere.

("Virginity" is a bullshit standard, for that matter.)

Christopher Hitchens (on the virgin birth):

Which is more likely: That the whole natural order is suspended? Or that a Jewish minx should tell a lie?

No, virgin births aren't more common that I'd think. Women and girls lying about being virgins is more common than I'd think.

@6,

So the 0.5 percent are better liars? Or they're just insane?

There is one medically-verified example of a woman conceiving and giving birth (through C-section) without ever having had vaginal intercourse. It's a long story involving Müllerian agenesis, fellatio, and an angry ex with a knife. Write-up is here.

maybe not following but what's the truth here? Are these girls lying, or are they not managing errant spooge carefully enough during other-than-penis-in-vagina sexual activities?

@15,
True, especially given the piss-poor sex ed some of these girls probably received (or didn't receive). Their beliefs about how reproduction works are likely besotted with ignorance and lies.

@15-17, that's the first thing that occurred to me. Did any semen get near any vaginas? I tried a little googly research to see if I could find statistics on this possibility. I found little to go on, except that the chance of pregnancy before the girl "really"* has PIV sex, is "extremely low."

*@6, One explanation for that fact, that formed in my own mind, was the 3% were lying, while maybe (some) of the 0.5% were not.
From reading the paper, it sounds correct that those 244 women not be included with the "virgin/pregnant" group since they were not in fact virgins.

A third group of women (n=244) not included in analysis, “born again virgins,” reported a history of sexual intercourse early in the study but later provided a conflicting report indicating virginity. Reports of pregnancy among born again virgins were associated with greater knowledge of contraception methods with higher failure rates (withdrawal and rhythm methods) and lower interview quality (data not shown), and reports from this group may be subject to greater misclassification error.

The authors also used different interview techniques to try to get the "liars" to reveal themselves, thus further separating the lying virgins (the 244) from any possible "real" virgins. Since there is no way to actually verify the subjects' statuses, this is the best they can do, yeah?

Even assuming all the self reports of virgin pregnancies in Add Health are due to error, the misclassification rate is low. In a randomized experiment, researchers (16) found that respondents who used audio computer assisted self interview were 1.46 times more likely to acknowledge that they had oral sex than respondents who used computer assisted personal interview and reported their behavior directly to an interviewer. The difference was even larger for an illegal behavior: respondents who used audio computer assisted self interview were 2.84 times more likely to acknowledge that they had used cocaine than respondents who used computer assisted personal interview.

The authors conclude with a key as to why I could find no data on the subject:

Among humans the incidence of self reported dates of sexual debut and pregnancy consistent with virgin pregnancy is unknown..

http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f7102

'a prayer for owen meany' is a fantastic book. read it if you haven't.