What's New  

Indonesian Official Faces Sanctions For Claiming Strong Sperm In Pools Can Impregnate Women

By Michael Bamidele

27 February 2020   |   10:27 am

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on WhatsApp Share on Telegram

The Indonesian official who claimed that women could get pregnant by swimming in a pool where a man with "strong sperm" had ejaculated is facing possible sanctions. Sitti Hikmawatty, a child protection commission member, drew controversy and online ridicule after her unscientific comments to a major media outlet last week. During  a video interview on teen…

Sitti Hikmawatty – Jurnal Islam

The Indonesian official who claimed that women could get pregnant by swimming in a pool where a man with “strong sperm” had ejaculated is facing possible sanctions.

Sitti Hikmawatty, a child protection commission member, drew controversy and online ridicule after her unscientific comments to a major media outlet last week.

During  a video interview on teen pregnancies with local news site Tribun Jakarta, Hikmawatty said that;

“There is an especially strong type of male sperm that may cause pregnancy in a swimming pool. Even without penetration, men may become sexually excited [by women in the pool] and ejaculate, therefore causing a pregnancy.”

Online, some men pledged to buy condoms before heading to the pool, while a picture of shark-shaped sperm closing in on a female swimmer – parodying a poster for the 1975 movie Jaws – went viral.

“I will emphasise here, swimming with the opposite sex will not cause pregnancy. Not all men who swim ejaculate and sperm cannot live in chlorinated pool water, let alone swim into the vagina,” a health influencer Blog Dokter told his 1.7 million Twitter followers in a rebuke to Hikmawatty’s comments.

“But even if a man was aroused and ejaculated in a pool the sperm would quickly die in chlorinated water.”

Although Hikmawatty has issued an apology and retracted her remarks, a three-member government commission has been assembled to decide if the former university professor will be sanctioned.

“This should serve as a lesson for all officials to be extra careful when they make public statements,” the newly formed commission’s chairman Susanto, who goes by one name, told AFP Thursday.