Sunday, August 06, 2006

Why does it upset everyone so much?

I have read heated debates on many boards on the "right" for women to have babies late in life, even out-right hatred against an older woman trying to get pregnant - and I wonder why it upsets everyone so much?

Is it YOUR money being spent? Will YOU have to raise the child? Will YOU have less of a chance to have a child as a result? Will YOUR medical costs increase as a result?

If your compassion for the resulting child leaves you worried that the parent will die - do you spend time worrying about the children of the enlisted? Police, fire, parametics? How exactly will your world change if an older woman has a child beyond an age YOU consider reasonable?

Or is it just "nasty" for an older woman to get pregnant, or OMG - has sex? Does it just go against all that is "right & decent" for an older woman to carry a child? Will society truly "pay the price" when all these 60 year old "baby-obsessed women start lining up at the drs office, demanding that society owes them a baby?" LOL

Sometimes I envision a world where no-one is allowed to have a baby without gov't approval. Where women are told that even at 25, it is impossible to get pregnant without medical help, and so all women are required to donate their eggs at puberty, to build up the necessary supply. Where natural conception no longer happens, and all babies are conceived in the drs office, with genetically-approved babies.

You might say that will never happen, but already reports are coming out that even at 27, most women will need help.

I read news “studies” stating that 27 is now considered on the cusp of “advanced age” (something about it getting much harder to conceive after age 26).
Source: http://familyscholars.org/?p=5925

Researchers find the probability for pregnancy is twice as high for women between 19 and 26 when compared to women ages 35 to 39. The previous belief was that fertility begins to drop significantly when a woman is in her early thirties. One study shows that drop actually starts to happen at about age 27.

Source: http://www.wptv.com/KelleyDunn/061906_TooOldToBeAMom.cfm


While these young women still represent a minority of infertility patients, their numbers are growing, thanks to an exploding fertility industry and an information blitz in the media and on the Internet about the risks of waiting too long to have children. There are little recent hard data on the trend, though, so the evidence is largely anecdotal, coming from doctors and patients alike.

From 1995 to 2002 -- the most recent year for which statistics are available -- the percentage of female college graduates 22 to 29 years of age who had received fertility treatments at some point in their lives doubled, to 23 percent, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Survey of Family Growth. At Conceive magazine, a two-year-old publication aimed at women trying to get pregnant, 46 percent of readers are younger than 30 years of age (73 percent of the readers are younger than 35) and 86 percent have college degrees or higher.

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=47251&nfid=crss



So, are you ready for YOUR choice to be taken away too? Better tell the 18 year olds to get pregnant NOW, before it's too late and they are too old! ;)

2 comments:

DD said...

I have to admit, before my uterus went on strike and I was 36, I really thought 40 was too old...for me or anyone else for that matter.

Now that I'm on that cusp, I give credit to those who are 45+ still working on it. Age truly is just a number.

Anonymous said...

I do believe there is a time when a woman is too old to be a mother. Believe it or not, your energy level does decrease as you get older making it unfair for the child. I also question who is going to raise this child if the parents die before the child is old enough to care for himself. When you have a child in your 20/30's you don't have the fear you could get sick and die tomorrow. Your siblings and friends are all your age and willing to be guardians to raise your children if something happens. However in your 40's or older your friends and siblings don't want that responsibility. They've raised their kids. They are looking forward to the next phase of their life. As I get older I worry about possible illnesses that could take me away from my young children. I am no longer immortal if you will. Is it fair for me to keep having babies when my risks increase of developing a life threatening illness? Is it fair for me to indulge my desires at the risk of an innocent child? Yes, I could die in a car accident tomorrow but that isn't the same as being 45 knowing that I've already lived more than half my life. I had my first child at 26 hoping I'd live to see them graduate college, get married and have babies of their own. If I have a baby at 48, it is a very real possibility I may not even get to see him/her graduate college. Who is that fair to?