In a more modern, less divinely inspired rendition of the virgin birth story, there’s no manger, angelic vision, or a single fucking wise man. There is, much more festively, a stabbing and a blowjob.
Allegedly.
Today’s Moment of Science… Virgin births, stray bullets, and urban legends.
My favorite scientific phenomena that technically could happen but just kinda doesn’t? Human virgin birth. Parthenogenesis, documented to happen in a litany of plants and animals, is a process by which the uterus says “STOP THE POUNDING I’LL DO IT MYSELF.” Outside of a laboratory though, confirmed instances of parthenogenesis in human embryos (or mammals in general) is somewhere between ‘rare’ and ‘the virgin Mary was a fucking liar.’
So. That time someone got stabbed pregnant.
The British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology discusses a fifteen year old girl with a blind vagina, abdominal pain, and swelling. A short vaginal canal that ends in a pouch or sac disconnected from the fetus incubator is typical for a blind vagina. So no passage for sperm, no way to make a baby, right? The idea that the teen was pregnant seemed preposterous.
But she had been to the hospital before, apparently the result of a lover’s quarrel. An ex boyfriend walked in on her having fun with her new boyfriend, and a knife fight broke out. It’s not clear who stabbed whom, but at some point after the blowjob ended but before she toweled off, she was stabbed in the upper abdomen.
Nine months later, she was at the hospital, delivering a child. Cause of pregnancy? Not swallowing.
But like… did it happen? Did it really?
There’s certainly a write-up in a reputable publication saying it did. The MD PhD who wrote the correspondence is a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Google assures me that means he’s a fancy fuck who certainly wouldn’t have pranked us for shits and giggles.
But stabby mcblowjob incubation? Great band name, strains credulity. It also feels far too much like the Civil War stray bullet pregnancy urban legend.
In the 1860s, a doctor treated a soldier who was unfortunately struck in the testicle by a bullet and, on the same day, treated a woman who was shot in the abdomen. 278 days later she showed up ready to give birth, and would you believe she was a virgin without so much as a warm glance from a single gentleman this long war?
A lot of doctors heard stories like that- not so much the bullet part but the ‘how could this happen what’s a penis’ part. Eventually a doctor wrote a satirical medical article for The American Medical Weekly. Even though he wrote an update explaining that it had been a joke a few weeks later, the Civil War stray bullet pregnancy urban legend was born.
Is the fellatio knife fight blind vagina pregnancy just a new twist on an old legend? Let’s examine a few things.
Typically the Civil War story has a mother with two daughters, ages 15 and 17, near the battlefield doing nursing work when the 17 year old is hit. There’s physical proof that she’s a virgin in the form of an intact hymen. In every single retelling, it’s 278 days exactly between treatment for the injury to the abdomen and admission for labor. There are a few additional medical details to throw someone off if they’re not paying attention. And of course, the man with the blown off testicle made an honest young woman out of her, they made more babies, but that first kid looked more like him than the rest.
But we’re smarter now so we gotta make up more elaborate bullshit.
We know that the hymen is a pretty ‘meh’ indicator of… anything, really. It’s not a barrier, and sperm are pretty good swimmers. So what better way to fortify the ‘pregnant virgin’ story than a vagina that’s congenitally locked the fuck down? Well, even that has complications. Those first menstrual cycles with a blind vagina can be extra painful. It’s often treated with surgery that, super technical term, unblinds the pussy. Menstruating for years with no treatment for the condition is unlikely. So compared to the Civil War story, the teen pregnancy via knifing was more “plausible” if the girl was 15, closer to the typical age range when menstruation begins.
And somehow, it just happened to be exactly 278 days between trips to the hospital in both cases. Which seems convenient.
The young couple have apparently stayed together, “some cattle changed hands” to settle that all down, and of course, the child looks just like dad.
I can’t say for sure if this version of the story really happened. I wouldn’t stake this doctor’s reputation on it being fake. But I wouldn’t bet money I couldn’t afford to light on fire on this being real.
This has been your Moment of Science, suggesting perhaps getting pregnant the old fashioned way: by gazing into Braco’s eyes.
To get the MOS delivered to your inbox every weekday and reward the bounty of effort I put into sliding all these jokes about penises in a science article, head to patreon.com/scibabe.
Join the discussion!