IVF and other property crimes
On Monday, 20 June, 2005, one Professor Ledger ("a leading UK fertility expert"), via the BBC, warned of a "reproductive time bomb" threatening the UK if women continued to put off having children until their late 30's or early 40's.
Last Sunday, he proclaimed the bomb detonated from the front page of the Observer. A staggering, frightening, ( Read more... )
The Guardian website shows the article as having been edited today, which presumably accounts for why almost nothing in the line "Last Sunday, he proclaimed the bomb detonated from the front page of the Observer. A staggering, frightening, threatening, unsustainable number of women were forced to resort to IVF." actually relates to the current text. The BBC website does still have two single line quotes that seem to fit your areas of complaint - Bill Ledger is quoted as saying "The sustainability of the population of Europe is at risk because there are too few children being born. It is a threat to the future." and Allan Pacey with the view that the NHS was unlikely to be able to fund a huge increase in demand for fertility treatment". The latter point does not seem especially surprising; if the NHS is deemed unable to fund the £1000 per patient per year for Aricept to forestall development of Alzheimer's symptoms, it's likely to be stretched to find the several thousand pound cost per cycle of IVF, even it is for only a few thousand patients per year. As to the former, Eurostat figures seem to bear out his assertion, with most European countries seeing significantly fewer than than the 2.1 lifetime live births usually taken as providing a static population in the absence of immigration.
I have found no evidence on-line for the assertions either that the lifetime birth rate per woman in the UK is over 2.0 or that the birth rate has been steadily increasing over the last 20 years. I'd be interested to know whether the source of these particular figures was the print copy of the Observer, or some other reference. Ultimately though, most fertility treatment arguments are not driven by population averages but by the experiences and wants of individuals. Many women appear to want children; if the assertion that fertility decreases with age is assumed to be true (and I've yet to see any hard evidence to contradict it) then we as a society have to decide whether we plough money into treatments to boost fertility after its natural peak, tell women who have developed their careers and find themselves suffering from age-related fertility loss that their want for a child is irrelevant since there's an admirable sufficiency of teenage mums with multiple offspring to sustain our population, or look at ways of restructuring working lives and career paths to accommodate earlier pregnancies and professional development. I'm not going to hold my breath whilst waiting for the third option to be adopted.
On the issue of whether women and men are treated equally in considerations of fertility issues, I'm not quite sure what the "invasion of privacy" that women suffer but men don't is supposed to be. Certainly it would be difficult to argue that fertility problems in men are treated any more sympathetically than those in women - erectile dysfunction, low sperm counts and poor sperm motility are the stuff of sitcoms and (ahem) stand-up routines. In so far as I can determine, testing for male fertility issues doesn't appear to be significantly more dignified than the female equivalent.
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-- "On the issue of whether women and men are treated equally in considerations of fertility issues, I'm not quite sure what the "invasion of privacy" that women suffer but men don't is supposed to be. Certainly it would be difficult to argue that fertility problems in men are treated any more sympathetically than those in women - erectile dysfunction, low sperm counts and poor sperm motility are the stuff of sitcoms and (ahem) stand-up routines."
I know! Let's talk about Teh Poor Menz!
Or not.
Talk to the numbers, refute the numbers, bring new numbers... Or STFU and stop trying to derail the conversation. I've been a feminist and online for more than five minutes, you know. This hissy fit is not enough to make me see the error of my termagant ways.
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I gave you alternative numbers in the form of the link to the official EU birth rate statistics; you ignored them and then attacked me for your own oversight. I asked for your sources in order to allow me to investigate the discrepancies; you ignored the request. When I highlighted the fact that the MoT metaphor you found so offensive was not in fact restricted to one sex, you made no attempt to justify your original claim but - yes, ignored the challenge to your unsupported assertion. Only when in part of my last paragraph I had the temerity to suggest that possibly the treatment of men and women in infertility treatments was not so unequal as you claimed did you see fit to respond, with an allegation that I was trying to bury or derail the rest of the argument. With one line out of a 42-line response.
I couldn't derail the conversation if I wanted to, because there isn't one. You shun two-way communication. You specialise in demagoguery rather than debate. I will however STFU, since attempting to find out whether there actually is any reason behind your diatribes shares a lot of qualities with pissing into the wind, with the exception that posting here doesn't even leave me with a brief warm feeling. I wish you and those who share your world-view well, but I have no wish to cross paths further in this direction.
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I saw you coming, called bullshit, and wouldn't play. I also gave you the opportunity to shift the conversation on track. You chose to flounce out, tossing endgame sleeve-aces about "temerity", "diatribes" and "you and those who share your views" over your shoulder.
*shrug* What can I say? Careful the coffee table don't hit your shins on the way out.
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There was no gamesmanship though in my reply; as far as I was concerned, you'd set the scope of the discussion by your original post and my response stayed firmly within those boundaries. It really was a straightforward response to points that you raised and that I felt there were sufficient grounds to query. Still is; the EU figures that I linked to still flatly contradict some of your assertions and a quick Google for the terms 'health' and 'MOT' will rapidly confirm that the term is neither new nor gender-restricted.
You can take me at face value on this or continue to congratulate yourself on how alert you are to the evil schemes of the patriarchy as you see fit; I have no ideology to defend beyond the principle of evidence-based conclusions and how you view me personally isn't going to make a whole lot of difference to my life, To borrow a gesture, *shrug*. I don't think how I view your stance on this is going to make a whole lot of difference to your life either.
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Not to mention the fact that the (badly, disgustingly named, let me be clear about that) "MOT" you're referring to is a life saving, cancer preventing one - whereas the tests Ledger is proposing for women only assess their brood mare potential. What does that tell me about your priorities? That while you accept that it's important to keep men alive, you will compare me to Paul Dacre for insisting that women's reproductive potential is a) not public property and b) not the most important thing about them? Classy.
Now to those EU figures. According to the chart you linked, the UK birthrate was 1.74 in 1996 and 1.84 ten years later. Would you compare me to Melanie Phillips if I said that to my mind, that constitutes something less than a catastrophic decline? That it might even be a - horrors! - rise?
Even if it isn't, and the birth rate per couple in the UK is plumetting, though, what problem does that create that can't be solved by encouraging immigration into the country?
My answer is: there is no problem. It's completely fictional. But this Ledger guy is a right wingers wet dream, in that he allows them to conflate their hate filled rhetoric about whiteness and control of women through tehir sexuality and reproductive potential. Perfect fucking imaginary storm.
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You've previously referred to the test as "an invasion of privacy" and in your last comment stated that "women's reproductive potential is not public property". Whilst I can understand and fully support the idea that any such test should be elective and properly confidential, I'm less clear on why the availability of this particular test would automatically compromise personal privacy. Many other tests are available to those who want them and routinely performed without the results being brought into the public domain. Is your concern therefore that the proposal would inexorably lead to mandatory testing and some kind of register?
It would certainly be wrong to assume that the ability to reproduce is the defining characteristic of a woman, but your reference to individual fertility as "brood mare potential" and focus on immigration as the solution to the issue of low lifetime birth rates suggests that you consider fertility to be a purely social, rather than individual issue. This is a perfectly respectable position to hold, but it would be unrealistic to believe that it is one which enjoys universal support amongst women, many of who do (or at least claim to) want to be able to have children of their own. If we allow that this is a valid want, and not simply a matter of patriarchal brainwashing, then it places a different context around the elective assessment of individual fertility.
Numbers. Yeah. You originally stated that "The birth rate in Britain women is just over 2.0 children per woman" and that "the birth rate has been steadily increasing in the last 20 years". In fact, a TFR of 2.0 hasn't been seen in the UK since 1973 and the steady increase has been over the last seven, following on from a 2001 low in the wake of the last major economic upset (.com bubble), which was in itself at the end of a period of steady decline throughout the '90s and a flat-lined '80s (source: National Statistics Online, Bulletins for 2007 and 2008). That said, the UK figure is now over 1.9, the direction is upwards even for white, middle class mothers and as you note, we're some considerable way off suffering a population crisis.
There remains though a real distinction to be made though between fertility as a component of population numbers and fertility as a matter of personal health/well-being.
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I wasn't talking about men. I know, shocking.
The article I was referring to did not mention health MOTs for men. The entire concept has so far been mentioned in my hearing by one person only, and that is you, *after* I had written my article that wasn't talking about men.
Men, in the abstract, had virtually nothing to do with the reason for my original article.
As did, for example, rain forests. Wherefore, despite the fact that the distruction of the rain forest is self-evidently bad and harmful, not prefacing my arguments with a disclaimer stating that fact does not invalidate my opinion.
As for the conflation of individual women's fertility and the national birth rate, the Observer article was doing just that. That's what "we ought to require X of *individual women* because of Y *national issue" MEANS. If you want to take issue with that fact, I suggest you talk to the Ob.
Alternatively you can actually say something that is relevant to my original point, which, to summarise, is as follows: why is it front page news that women who are putting off having babies until later in their lives should be required to safeguard their fertility with early-day medical tests? Or, to break it down into a set of simpler questions:
- Why is the national birth rate a problem?
- Why is that problem framed as being the property of women, to create or solve?
- How is having children at a later age contributing to this problem?
- What legal/constitutional basis is there be to require women to submit their bodies to fertility testing years before the issue becomes relevant to them as individuals?
- Why is any of it front page news?
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Given the common currency of the term, I still don't believe that the use of "MOT" in this case represents the sort of differential treatment of sexes normally associated with gender bias and I responded to the implication in your line "An MOT is for cars, not people, you say? Well, where did you get the radical notion that women are people from?" that you found term discriminatory. This does not alter the fact though that you are entitled to be be annoyed by the article in isolation - whether the term is an equal opportunity offender or not does not alter the fact that in this particular, necessarily sex-specific usage it gave offence to you.
There is a problem which I've already alluded to (admittedly with a certain degree of snark) in that the version of the Observer article available via your link doesn't make any reference to the national birth rate at all, nor does its wording suggest any feeling that this test is something that should be 'required' of women in the sense of them being subject to any legal compulsion. The print version may well have done - I've no way of checking - but the on-line version that has stood since I first read your post doesn't. This makes addressing the majority of your questions in the strict context of this article difficult.
In general terms, why national birth rate is important is a simple question that could easily prompt an answer running to several pages. In short, it is certainly not the only way of maintaining a sustainable demographic profile but a self-replenishing population is by far the easiest to plan for and manage. It is however not a problem in itself, merely a factor in population-based planning and it would be highly inappropriate to seek to extend state control over the rights of the individual to have or refrain from having children as they see fit.
Why might the problem be framed in terms of female fertility? This seems like a strange question from so vigorous a champion of women's reproductive freedom as yourself, but can bluntly be expressed in terms of the massively differing commitment levels of male and female in term pregnancy and to the rather shorter window of fertility that women experience.
How is having children at a later age contributing to this problem? Actually having children isn't, but that implies successful conception. The risk is that a greater proportion of those hoping to conceive will fail to do so as the age they first try for a child increases.
What legal/constitutional basis is there to require women to be tested? None whatsoever. That said, there's no indication in any of the articles cited that that's even been proposed, much less that enforcement is being actively planned. Why test years ahead of the potential issue? Given that the decline in natural fertility is closer to an exponential than a linear progression, it makes sense for those intending to have children later in their life to understand where they are on the curve and make an informed choice based on that. There's very little advantage in being tested at 40 to be told, "If you'd only come to us 5 years ago..."
Why is it front page news? Your guess is as good as mine, but I'd suggest that it's not entirely unconnected to us being in August.
No rain forests were directly harmed in the composition of this response.
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The fact is, no matter what the calendar says, when you put an issue on the fron page of a national newspaper, you make it a national issue. Which brings me to the next point.
I don't feel obligated to scour the text for ominous Orwellian promises of forced testing and compulsory insemination. The fact that it is framed, by definition, as a national issue, and the fact that Prof Ledger (for whom this is an old hobbyhorse) is pronouncing on the seriousness of this national issue, is enough to worry me and give me ample cause for hyperbole.
Because, to touch on your point of me allegedly looking at fertility only as it impacts soceity at large, a woman's (or man's) fertility is their own personal issue, and theirs alone. It is *not* something that should be addressed as a wider social concern. And so it should never be on the front page of the Ob in the first place.
But there it was, and so I looked to tehir own supporting data for some sor of evidence that they have even a shred of genuine concern or consideration for people in general and women in particular. And they didn't. They simply failed in any way shape or form to furnish any data to offer an internal justification for their editorial choice. That tells me 2 things:
#1 The Observer editorial team, along with Prof Ledger, think that women are not entitled to privacy. This is evidenced by their exposing what is a personal and private concern to national scrutiny.
#2 The Observer, and especially Prof Ledger, think women are a faceless crowd of the most abjectly blithering idiots who go through life completely unaware of teh process of aging. They also think that women are iliterate, and therefore have never managed to get themselves exposed to the one or two occasional mentions of "the biological clock" that appear in the media here and there. Scratch that, women are all stupid, illiterare, deaf *and* blind, cause they obviously never saw Bridget Jones or followed Sex and the City or really managed to absorb any culture at all, ever. And so those nice people are just trying to help women, because they are really, really *concerned* that, being too dumb to think for ourselves, we may put off procreation until it's too late.
These two elements - manufactured panic of the "think of the children" variety and fake concern for those dumb women who don't know what's best for them - are bulwarks of the anti-abortion movement in the US, and I see myself as amply justified in throwing a fucking FIT when I see them rear their hideous heads on the pages of Britain's most progressive national paper.
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