How Do You Get Pregnant With No Vagina?

UPDATE [June 30, 2026]: If we had our time again we would have produced this episode differently. We got carried away with the wildness of the story, from a scientific perspective, and didn't take time to really think about the fact that this is the story of a 15-year-old, who would have been going through a really difficult time. Many of our listeners rightly pointed this out, and we appreciate it." We have changed some of our language in this episode based on the feedback – we replaced all references to woman to teenager or girl, we cut some moments that we viewed as insensitive, and we removed the reference to the girl not being intersex, as some folks with the condition Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome do identify as intersex. Here’s the story: It's 1988 in Lesotho, and doctors at a hospital see something they thought was impossible. A 15-year-old girl shows up pregnant and in labor, but she's missing something pretty crucial to her delivery: a vagina. So — how did this happen? We speak with Dr. Neel Shah to find out. Find our transcript here: https://tinyurl.com/sciencevsnovagina In this episode, we cover: (00:00) A small war (04:42) How do you get pregnant without a va