Can you get pregnant from dry humping?

Last updated on October 23, 2020

Question:

Hi, I am 19 years old. I read your article about dry humping if it was considered a form of fornication. I just really wanted to say thank you because you have made me really stop and come to realize that sex isn’t the only form of sin. I am a pastor’s daughter and my boyfriend is a pastor’s son. We both agreed that we weren’t going to have sex before marriage, but we have dry-humped several times. When I read that article, I just really felt guilty because I am a Christian, and I really didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. But now I know I am and I’m scared. Even though he never came while we were dry humping, neither did I, can I get pregnant? 

Answer:

Satan is the master of lies (John 8:44). He wants people to sin, but he doesn’t care what sin you are committing. So while you were focused on not having sexual intercourse and thus committing fornication, he got you convinced that sexual touching and sensuality was not harmful. Along with that, there probably was a sprinkle of pride in there that since you both were children of preachers, you would able to recognize sin and avoid it. It was because you thought you would know that you were fooled into not looking. “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (I Corinthians 10:12).

It is the sin that is the most dangerous part and I hope that both of you take the matter to God and change your behavior.

Pregnancy is always a possibility when sexual acts are taking place, but I suspect that in this case, the odds are near zero. What I don’t know is how much, or how little, you two were wearing at the time or several other factors, so let me explain a few things.

When a man ejaculates semen, the fluid contains roughly about a half-billion sperm cells. Only one sperm cell needs to reach a woman’s egg for her to get pregnant, but because the journey is hazardous, a man produces far more than is needed to make the possibility of pregnancy possible. But semen isn’t the only fluid a man produces when sexually aroused. He also produces a pre-ejaculate fluid that is called pre-cum in slang. That fluid gets the pathway for ejaculation prepared. What people ignore is that that fluid can also contain sperm. If present, it is usually a very small amount, but the possibility is still there.

Sperm needs fluid to both survive and to move. So if the outer clothing stayed dry, then no sperm could have crossed. Even if both sets of clothing got moist with body fluids, still the odds of some sperm being present and crossing the boundaries are very low — especially if ejaculation didn’t occur.

I should also mention another route. People who engage in sexual stimulation rarely stick to rubbing bodies together while fully clothed. If hands are put under each other’s clothing so that the genitals are touched, it means fluid can be picked up on the fingers. That fluid can then be transferred from the man to the woman, and if it contained sperm, they can swim from there up the vagina. The odds still remain very low, but again it isn’t zero.

As I mentioned in the answer that you read earlier, the real deception that Satan uses is the justification, “Nothing happened last time.” What ends up happening is that people keep going a little bit further toward actual intercourse, all the while telling themselves that as long as it doesn’t go all the way, then it is all right. The problem is that it is never all right. It is two people filling their minds with lust for each other’s bodies. “Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts” (Romans 13:13-14). So quit playing with fire.

Response:

Thank you so much! (: You have been an amazing blessing. Time has passed and I haven’t done it again. (: