Christmas celebrates the birth of baby Jesus by the Virgin Mary, who believers say miraculously conceived while maintaining her purity. According to a report from the Christmas edition of Britain's Medical Journal (BMJ), some women do not think Mary is the only virgin to ever have a child. In the new study, nearly 1 percent of pregnant women in the United States believed they had an immaculate conception as well.

In the report, titled "Like a virgin (mother)," researchers interviewed 7,870 girls and women aged 15 to 28. Out of the 5,340 pregnancies in the group throughout the study, 45 women -- 0.8 percent -- said they became pregnant without engaging in sexual intercourse. This does not include those who conceived via in vitro fertilization and other forms of assisted reproductive technology.

Reuters reports that the authors of "Like a virgin (mother)" concluded that the unscientific claims of these participants show that researchers must be more careful when it comes to interpreting self-reported data. Things like personal beliefs, desires and imperfect memory, can affect what participants report to scientists.

"We examined the incidence of virgin pregnancy and birth based on self report of pregnancy and sexual debut, hypothesizing that individual and contextual factors may influence reporting," the researchers, including lead Amy H. Herring, a biostatiscian at UNC's Gillings School of Global Public Health, wrote.

Scientists from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill performed the study by examining participants from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health which began in the 1994-1995 school year. At the beginning of the study, the participants were 12 to 18 years old.

Some of the 45 women who say they conceived immaculately have a history of wanting to promote their abstinence. 31 percent of the "virgins" signed chastity pledges. Almost 28 percent of their mothers say that they did not have the proper knowledge to teach their daughters about sex and contraception.

Out of those who admitted to having sexual intercourse to conceive, only 5 percent of their mothers said they did not discuss sex and contraception with their daughters.

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