British women pay $ 10,000 for virgin births

Pro- lifers call trend unnatural

Dozens of young British women have had virgin births after undergoing invitro fertilization ( IVF), doctors report.

Four major British fertility firms said they had assisted in such cases, with doctors suggesting there have been at least 25 such births in the past five years.

Fertility doctors said single women who had never had sexual intercourse were seeking donorassisted treatment — at a cost of about $ 10,000 each — because they wanted to have a child now and save sex for a “special relationship.”

Others said their cases involved women with a fear of sex.

The decision to provide fertility treatment in such cases has been criticized by religious groups, who said it undermined the importance of bringing up children in stable marriages.

Care Fertility, which runs five centres across England, is among the clinics to confirm virgin births.

Maha Ragunath, medical director of its clinic in Nottingham, said: “The number of single women I see has doubled over the last decade and single women now account for at least 10 per cent of my patients.

“A lot of them are very young, in their 20s, sometimes studying or doing very ordinary jobs and often living with their parents, rather than career women who have been driven and focused too much on their work.

“When I ask them why they’re coming for treatment, very often the response is that they’re ready to have a child and they don’t want to wait around for the right partner to come along,” she said.

“A small percentage have never been in a relationship and never had sexual intercourse,” she added.

Over the last three years, she has provided successful treatment to three virgin women, she said.

Tracey Sainsbury, a senior fertility counsellor and research officer at the London Women’s Clinic, said she sees about two single, virgin women a year wanting to have a baby.

“Some have never had a relationship, others have been in a relationship but never had intercourse, some are single lesbian women. For others there may be psychological or medical reasons why they have never had sex,” she said.

Josephine Quintavalle, from the pro- life campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: “What is the child for these women? A teddy bear that they pick off the shelf?

“The message from nature is for a male and female to have a child, and I am saddened that we are willing to distort this.”