can u get pregnant without having sex?
Pregnancy can happen when ejaculate or pre-ejaculate gets in the vagina or on the vulva. Usually, this happens from unprotected vaginal intercourse.
It may also happen if partners do other things that put ejaculate or pre-ejaculate in contact with the vagina or vulva — for example, if partners have ejaculate or pre-ejaculate on their hands and they touch the vagina or vulva.
Ejaculate is produced by the prostate gland and the seminal vesicles. It contains sperm that is produced by the testes. Pre-ejaculate, which leaks from the penis before ejaculation, is produced by the Cowper’s glands. It doesn’t contain sperm that cause pregnancy. However, as it moves through the urethra, it can pick up sperm from a previous ejaculation, which might cause pregnancy.
So, it’s best to keep both ejaculate and pre-ejaculate away from the vagina and vulva to prevent pregnancy.
Tags: pregnancy, sex
Having unprotected sex comes with the risk of getting pregnant. That's why it's almost impossible to believe that a cisgender woman can get pregnant without having penetrative sex. Turns out, it's not impossible—and some people online claim it happened to them.
Sammi Isabel shared her story in a TikTok video that quickly went viral. In the video, Isabel talked about feeling crampy at prom, later realizing that her period was a week late. Although a virgin at the time, Isabel took a pregnancy test—and it was positive. "And that is how I have a 5-year-old son," Isabel wrote in the caption.
In a later TikTok, Isabel insisted that the story was not fake. "I want people to know that it's a possibility," Isabel said.
Isabel is hardly the first to say this happened to them. Wathoni Anyassi also talked about becoming pregnant as a virgin on the YouTube channel LoloTalks. "I was like, 'Wow, pregnant. How did this happen?'" Anyassi remembered thinking, according to the video.
It's easy to write these stories off as hoaxes. But healthcare providers advise these so-called virgin pregnancies can actually happen.
A data analysis published in the BMJ in 2013 found that, of the 7,870 cisgender women who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, 45 cisgender women said they had a virgin pregnancy that wasn't related to reproductive assistance, like in-vitro fertilization (IVF) or intrauterine insemination (IUI).
The researchers found that these reports were more common with cisgender women who signed chastity pledges or whose parents didn't talk to them much—or at all—about sex and birth control.
A notable caveat, per the researchers: Getting pregnant without having sex is usually a hard thing to prove. "Even with numerous enhancements and safeguards to optimize reporting accuracy, researchers may still face challenges in the collection and analysis of self-reported data on potentially sensitive topics," they wrote.
But Lauren Streicher, MD, a professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, told Health that plenty of healthcare providers have seen this. "Many obstetricians have stories of having delivered someone who states she is a virgin and has an intact hymen," Dr. Streicher said. "There are definitely virgin births."
The use of an intact hymen—a small amount of extra tissue around the vaginal opening—to determine virginity is controversial, given that the hymen can tear or stretch with non-sexual activity, such as from using tampons or getting gynecological exams, according to 2019 research published in Reproductive Health.
However, if a cisgender woman has an intact hymen and says they never had penetrative sex, Dr. Streicher said it makes their virgin pregnancy story more likely.
Other healthcare providers also agree that virgin pregnancies can happen. "Indeed, this is possible," Mary Jane Minkin, MD, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology and reproductive sciences at Yale Medical School, told Health.
"The risk of getting pregnant in this way is very low because sperm can only live for a short time outside of the body," women's health expert Jessica Shepherd, MD, an ob-gyn in Dallas, Texas, told Health. "However, it is still possible and has occurred in women."
Getty ImagesIn order for a pregnancy to occur, there needs to be sperm and an egg, among many other factors. In general, sperm comes together with an egg during penetrative sex. However, pregnancy may be able to occur in a few other ways without sex.
Assisted Reproductive Technology
For individuals who have had problems getting pregnant, a person may be able to conceive through assisted reproductive technology (ART) without engaging in sex, according to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). ART entails treatments and procedures that are used to ensure pregnancy as an outcome. The most traditional ART options are intrauterine insemination (IUI) and in vitro fertilization (IVF), per the NICHD.
With IUI, a high-quality sperm sample is placed into the uterus by a doctor using a long, narrow tube in a low-invasive procedure, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. This treatment is designed to be carried out during an individual's ovulation cycle, using fertility medication if necessary to aid the process.
IVF is a longer treatment than IUI. It takes place in a four-step process, per the NICHD, which includes:
- Superovulation
- Egg retrieval
- Fertilization
- Embryo transfer
By the end of the process, a healthcare professional places a laboratory-produced embryo from sperm and eggs into the uterus.
For both treatments, pregnancy test administration occurs two weeks following the placement of the sperm after IUI or the embryo after IVF to determine if the procedures were successful.
Foreplay
Dr. Shepherd pointed out that eggs and sperm can join up with sexual foreplay, too. "This can happen when sperm get into the vagina—by having semen or pre-ejaculate on the fingers and close contact with the vagina, [for example if] the male ejaculates near the vaginal opening, or if a partner's erect penis comes into contact with the body near the vagina," Dr. Shepherd said.
The first few drops of seminal fluid (i.e. the fluid that transports semen out of a man's penis) "has plenty of sperm," Dr. Minkin said, adding, "They just need to find their way up into the vagina and up to the cervix."
Virgin pregnancies are more likely to happen to younger people, who tend to be pretty fertile, Dr. Minkin said. Dr. Streicher added: "Women need to know that this is absolutely a real thing and that pregnancies can occur without penetration. All you need is for sperm to be at the opening of the vagina—they're good swimmers."
So first, know a virgin pregnancy is a rare occurrence—you shouldn't worry too much that you're pregnant if you didn't have penetrative sex. That said, there's enough of a risk of getting pregnant without having sex that you probably want to take precautions in the future.
If there's any chance your partner's penis or semen makes contact with or gets close to your vagina, even if it doesn't actually go inside, "use the same contraception that you would use if you were having penetrative sex," Dr. Streicher advised. "It's really no different."
Barrier birth-control methods (like condoms with spermicide) can be helpful, Dr. Shepherd said. Plan B is also an option if you're unsure how safe you were when you engaged in sexual foreplay, Dr. Shepherd added. And long-acting reversible contraception, such as an IUD or the birth control implant, can help provide protection when you don't want to think about birth control, Dr. Minkin said.