14 DAY TRIAL // A paper published in the Christmas issue of the prestigious British Medical Journal (BMJ) shows that almost one percent of all young women who became pregnant in the United States say they have done so miraculously. I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep and unrelenting mistrust in such claims, which do carry with them a kernel of something we should all learn.
The investigation was carried out by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who say that these results should teach many researchers a lesson about the inexactitude of self-reported behaviors, which are often included in scientific reports, ABS-CBN News reports.
There are multiple reasons why a woman would argue she had a miraculous conception or birth, including strong beliefs or wishes, and a fallible memory. The new study is based on data collected from 7,870 women in the United States, aged 15 to 28. A total of 5,340 pregnancies were reported, of which 45 were claim to be independent from the “help” of men.
The study also revealed that the parents of girls who made such claims generally did not engage in discussions about intercourse, contraception, or birth control methods with their teenage daughters, which is another very common problem in the United States, particularly in fundamentalist Christian communities.