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Dozens of young women have had virgin births after undergoing IVF in Britain, it has been reported.

Four major British fertility firms said they had assisted in such cases.

Fertility doctors said single women who had never had sexual intercourse were seeking donor-assisted treatment 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 criticised 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 twenties, 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 are coming for treatment, very often the response is that they are ready to have a child and they don't want to wait around for the right partner to come along," she told the Mail on Sunday.


"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; one a nurse, another living at home with her parents, and a third who needed multiple rounds of IVF, she said.

Tracey Sainsbury, a senior fertility counsellor and research officer at the London Women's Clinic, said she saw 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 sexual intercourse, some are single lesbian women; for others there may be psychological or medical reasons why they have never had sex," she said.

The Telegraph, London