Like a virgin...
Updated on 15 November 2007
...but only with surgery. For some women, if their broken hymen doesn't bleed on their wedding night, there are lethal repercussions.
There are calls tonight for a change in NHS guidelines allowing surgeons to carry out hymen reconstruction for women wanting to marry as virgins.
Private clinics are reporting a boom in demand for the operation from young women under pressure to prove their virginity.
And More4 News has learned that the operation is also being carried out on the NHS.
Magdy Hend owns two private clinics in London. Most of the time he treats infertility problems in both men and women. He also performs many genital cosmetic procedures of which hymenoplasty is just one.
He showed us the hymen booklet which depicts different types of hymen repair. Many prospective customers are shown it - from the simple stitch to the creation of a flap to cover the vagina and a gelatin capsule filled with a blood-like substance, inserted a few hours before sex.
But Dr Hend doesn't do these tehniques. They are too crude, he says, the surgery is obvious and the woman is in danger of getting caught.
"The other way," he says, "is to properly repair the hymen, that means we get the hymen, we open it again and stitch it back again, make it heal as it was; this way it is 100 per cent repaired, reconstructed, and is healed, and then when she has the wedding night it will tear and bleed again."
Dr Hend says the procedure is short, about half an hour. It is done under local anaesthetic - a relief to many young women who get their hymens reconstructed secretly, during their lunch hour.
'I think it is quite unethical to charge a phenomenal fee for a procedure which - in my mind - is a very dodgy operation.'Erik Scholten, specialist in cosmetic genital surgery
Many of his patients give false names and addresses. Fear and the possible wrath of their future husbands drives them to the operating table.
As Hend says: "I am sure some fear the surgery itself. But the fear of the consequences of the marriage if they're not virgins is far higher than the fear of surgery which takes 20 mins or half an hour. It is, for them, lifesaving."
This is nothing to do with religion, it is cultural. Some men will look at women who are virgins and believe that because they have not been touched before, they will be sincere, good mothers, good wives. For these men the hymen is - literally - a seal of approval.
Most of the women Magdy Hend treats are British from ethnic minorities or immigrants. Demand is increasing; the hymen section of his website gets up to 50 hits a day; he treats around two women a week, and charges £1800 for the procedure.
Some clinics, More 4 news found, charge nearly twice that price. But an intact hymen can only be certain in around 57 per cent of virgins.
Hymen repair is done for purely cultural or psycholgical reasons; it has no medical benefits and makes no visible cosmetic difference.
Erik Scholten, Britain's leading specialist in cosmetic genital surgery is utterly sceptical: "I think it is quite unethical to charge a phenomenal fee for a procedure which - in my mind - is a very dodgy operation.
"It does not restore hymen at all - it is just a way to make the woman bleed during her first night. And most of the time it is just putting a couple of stitches.
"I feel it would be better to bring it out in the open, like abortion procedures. In big clinics they can give you guaranteed certificates, so it is regulated, take it out of the darkness of back streets around Harley Street into mainstream clinics."
But hymen repair is happening in mainstream clinics. The information centre for health and social care told More4 News that 24 hymen repair procedures were done on the NHS between 2005 and 2006.
The Department of Health wouldn't comment on the procedure, but stated that: "Certain cosmetic procedures may be available to secure physical or psychological health."
Many people will be surprised to hear that hymenoplasty, viewed by some as an invasive, degrading procedure, can be performed for free.
Diana Nammi campaigns for the rights of Kurdish and Iranian women. She says if hymen repair was more widely available on the NHS, it could prevent many honour killings:
"If NHS provided help it would be great, private surgery costs lost of money, they haven't got any money to pay for surgery, NHS understanding importance of issue that could be very great help and save lives."
For some men, making sure a woman is a virgin is just another way of controlling her. And many grooms in Britain, usually from Moroccan, Algerian or Tunisian communities, demand virginity certificates - a medical document that states the hymen is intact.
Perhaps we are lulled into believing, that in our society all women are in control of their own bodies. But for some women, sex before marriage, comes at a heavy price.
