Virgin women in UK, US give birth to babies without having sex

LONDON (Web Desk) –Women are having children after undergoing IVF - despite never having had sex, according to doctors.

Twenty-five young women in the UK, all of whom are hetereosexual and in their twenties, have opted for IVF in the past five years because they feel ready to be a parent, doctors told the Mail on Sunday.

Some who have had the "virgin births" said they made the decision because they were still waiting for the right partner - and a few said they were afraid of sex owing to psychosexual complications.

Whilst some religious groups have said a child should be brought up in a traditional family, one doctor said these single mothers are often more emotionally and financially stable than others who have been left to bring up a child after a relationship breakdown.

Laura Witjens, chief executive of the National Gamete Donation Trust, said society tended to "freak out" when they heard about single women going for motherhood.

"These women have a right to choose this path if they want to, but clinics do have a responsibility to consider why they want to do so," she told the Mail.

A survey in 2013 claimed that one in every 200 women in the US reported to have become pregnant without having had sexual intercourse.

Of these women, 31% said they had signed a chastity pledge whereby they vow, usually for religious reasons, not to have sex. About 28% of those girls' parents said they rarely talked to them about sex or contraception - compared to only 5% of other women who became pregnant and had had intercourse.