A New Study On Immaculate Conception

Trigger

I just read an article titled “Wissenschaftliche Studie\Die Legende der jungfräulichen Geburt\Beruht Weihnachten nicht auf einem Wunder, sondern auch simpler Biologie? Einer Studie zufolge wird jedes 200. Kind in den Vereinigten Staaten von einer Jungfrau geboren – schreibt das British Medical Journal.” (German language).

Pregnancy Without Intercourse Or Reproductive Technology

This article refers to an article (public access, hurrah) published in the British Medical Journal. To quote from the abstract of this study:

“Objective To estimate the incidence of self report of pregnancy without sexual intercourse (virgin pregnancy) and factors related to such reporting, in a population representative group of US adolescents and young adults. ...

Conclusions Around 0.5% of women consistently affirmed their status as virgins and did not use assisted reproductive technology, yet reported virgin births.”

0.5% or every 200th woman reported an immaculate conception. About 21,000 respondents were included in this study. Were all these women just lying or making up or covering up or saying this for other reasons (e.g. religious)? Is this study bogus?

Is Parthenogenesis Possible In Humans?

From what little I understand, natural asexual reproduction such as Parthenogenesis is only possible in some plants and animals (mostly invertebrates), but not in humans until we find the Black Swan.

One thing seems to be certain, a pregnancy without sexual intercourse or use of reproductive technology is difficult to prove for at least as long no one can provide a verifiable prove that such a thing is not possible at all.