Is there any womb more barren than that of a virgin? At the darkest moment of mankind, when the dark power of Rome ruled not just a region, but the entire known world; when the whole thing was held together by the threat of torture on a cross, then, the barren womb twitched and quickened with life.
It's not just the time of Sarah, Rachel, Hannah or Mary. It's happened since. The frontiersman of the dark ages started again on the foundation that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin. Never before had the barbarian tribes held women in such high regard. This began with the early church councils. If Jesus was God and Mary bore Jesus, then Mary must be the 'theotokos', the God-bearer. Thus began something that changed the view of women in the Western world, elevating them to previously unheard heights. First Mary, and then by extension all virtuous women. A thousand years after Mary bore Jesus into Palestine, she bore Chivalry into Europe.
In our own lifetimes, when Europe was apostate and under the dark tyranny again, a young Polish man turned his attention to the mother of Jesus. George Weigel tells his story in Witness to Hope. While Karol Wotyla toiled in the rock quarries, as a slave of the Nazis, his hope was strengthened by Mary's example. Later, when he became known as John Paul II, he urged the people of Eastern Europe to "be not afraid," just as that teenaged girl was not afraid.
The point is hope. If God can cause a virgin to conceive and bring forth the Savior, then maybe good can be sent into any point in this world of darkness. The prophecy of the virgin birth came while Israel was under siege from Babylon (modern Iraq). Isaiah promised the King that an 'almah' a 'parthenos' (in Greek a virgin; in Hebrew a young woman who is possibly a virgin) would conceive and by the time she bore the child, the siege of Jerusalem would be lifted.
Speaking of Iraq, what about Hitchens and his support for the war to depose Sadam? From whence did his hope spring? Where did he get the idea that women deserve respect and that it is a moral and high purpose for statesman, soldiers and diplomats to protect them from abuse? It is a simple, empirical, historical fact, that this idea was begat in the medieval practice of honoring Jesus' mother. Whether you supported the war in Iraq or not, if you are honest about history, you have to acknowledge that in a very real historical sense the closing of Iraq's rape rooms began in the opening of the Virgin's womb.