Archives for 2009

Removing and freezing your ovary so you can “use” it later, when you’re “ready” to have children? Apparently.

Women from Hong Kong, California and New York who want to have babies, just not right now, are paying thousands of dollars to have their eggs frozen at Montreal’s McGill Reproductive Centre. In St. Louis, Mo., newly single professionals in their mid-30s have elected to remove and freeze part or an entire ovary, to use when they need it.

It has been five years since the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society sought to combat an infertility crisis by urging women to stop waiting so long to have babies, and five years since the scientific breakthrough that allowed women with cancer to successfully freeze their eggs or ovarian tissue. While one initiative was meant to convince women to begin their baby-making sooner, the other advancement predicted a future where any woman could cheat the ageing process that hampers fertility.

Rather than heeding the advice of starting sooner, women are increasingly turning to technology for what experts call social fertility reasons, even as the debate around preserving fertility continues.

I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic to the women who find out, often too late, that they can’t have the babies they suddenly realize they wanted all along. I can’t imagine how painful that must be. But – and you can call me a Crunchy Con all you like – I have trouble believing that this kind of awfully invasive (and expensive) technology is the answer.

_____________________

Andrea wins the award for most inappropriate response to a news item: Should I be admitting this? I found myself chuckling while reading this. I’m not laughing at infertility, just to be very clear, but rather at this notion that you could fight nature by removing a body part and freezing it the way I do with leftover casserole. It seems not only wrong to me, but slightly funny. By the way, the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society hasn’t exactly been working overtime to fight “the infertility crisis” as they call it–there is close to zero public awareness amongst the women I know that there’s a time limit on having babies. A certain type of feminist friend has won the day: they are out and about stridently asserting that none of this matters, that women have no real longing to be mothers and it’s really all about having that successful career, isn’t it? File folders and clients to see you through your old age, neatly arranged in piles and there when you need ’em. Fan-tas-tic.

_____________________

Véronique adds: Can I grab the award from Andrea’s capable hands for a minute and step on my soapbox? As someone who was blessed by runaway fertility I do not want to diminish the anguish felt by infertile couples. However, I was recently reading an excellent commentary from one of my students in bioethics at St. Paul’s University where she argued for public coverage of fertility treatment for infertile couples, including lesbian couples. I am increasingly irritated, on behalf of infertile couples everywhere, when we include old(er) women and lesbian women in our grab bag of infertility. Diminishing fertility because of age is not a medical condition: it’s the natural course of things (one I’m actually looking forward to, actually). Inexistent fertility because of homosexuality is not a medical condition: it is just the way things are when you don’t have a sperm and an egg. Don’t get me wrong: I am not saying that older women and homosexual couples shouldn’t want to be parents because that’s what they asked for (although I am not immune from thinking along those lines when I get going). My point is that in a system with limited resources the pie doesn’t get bigger as more people claim a piece of it. By ever extending the definition of infertility to include couples who are fertile but homosexual or used to be fertile but no longer are, we prevent those who are truly infertile from getting access to treatment.  

Also, while I’m at it, isn’t it interesting that a treatment that was originally meant for cancer patients made infertile by chemotherapy has been taken over by wealthy women wishing to beat nature? In the mean time, is the treatment available through public health insurance for cancer patients? I didn’t think so. No wonder provinces won’t fully fund infertility treatments.

Sarah Palin announces her resignation.

__________________

Andrea reads this: “But Palin also hinted at her own national ambitions, invoking a quote that she credited to Gen. Douglas MacArthur: “We are not retreating, we are advancing in another direction.” Good for her. I’d be thrilled if she ran again, nationally. I wouldn’t personally have the stamina for that kind of abuse, but I’d be thrilled.

And listening to this as I come in to work propels me to movie star status, lending a certain grandeur to even small things like pressing the button in the elevator. Enjoy.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtribxjttTU]

The head of the Korean affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation recently pleaded with his countrymen and women to have more children. I like this part:

Korea needs to create a new social atmosphere to make a woman’s job and her home life compatible. We need to allow workers to spend more time with their families. The annual working hours of a worker in Korea is 2,357 hours, the longest in the world. We need to vitalise the public education system to reduce the financial burden of private education and other expenses for children. We need to provide financial support for families, such as a child allowance or a child-rearing allowance, even if only for a very short period.

You’ll notice universal daycare full-day learning is not on the list…

Don’t you love it when your family newspaper tells you how to have great sex? If so, you’ll want to go have a look, here. I admit I was intrigued by the first paragraph:

Put away your vacuum pump, heavy-duty auto booster cables and edible latex Brad Pitt face mask-and-abs combo.

According to a study released Thursday, such items are simply litter along the road to great sex.

Brad Pitt I get, but heavy-duty auto booster cables? Do people (more or less normal people, I mean), use those for sex? I knew I’d missed a couple of beats, there, but I had no idea… Anyway. I don’t like litter so out they go!

Where was I? Oh yes. Great sex.

Apparently, according to that newspaper article (and who wouldn’t believe such a trusted source of empirical research?), “sexual fulfilment has far less to do with technique and perfect bodies — elements most often ascribed great significance by popular culture — and more to do with such factors as presence, connection and erotic intimacy.”

So pop culture and its countless magazines (you know which ones I mean) describing in great detail the 101 secrets to pleasing your guy are actually lying? Now that’s news!

So binge drinking is down, except among college students:

in the United States, anyway, reckless drinking is down over all, but not among college students. Among 18- to 20-year-old men who did not attend college, binge drinking declined more than 30 per cent between 1979 and 2006. But among male students it remained at a steady and significant level, while among female students — and this is the really bad news — it went up.

So why do I care is the question? Because my guess is that the culture of “friends with benefits” or one night stands is fuelled by alcohol… i.e., if a girl is sober, she is not likely to jump into bed with a stranger. And this of course links in to issue of abortion for the obvious reason.

Which reminds me of a study a psychologist friend sent me. An unethical study done in the early ’80s but nonetheless, since it was done, the findings are kind of interesting:

To summarise the experiment, five women and four men were sent, one at a time, onto a college campus. Each approached strangers of the opposite sex, and said: “I have been noticing you around campus. I find you to be very attractive.” They then invited the strangers either to go on a date, or to come over to their apartment, or to have sex with them.

This experiment was performed twice, and the results produced were very similar on both occasions (which indicates that the data is reliable). The report concludes: “The great majority of men were willing to have a sexual liaison with the women who approached them. Not one woman agreed to a sexual liaison.”

What this study says about men (who were more likely to want to have sex than go on a date!) I’ll leave up for grabs. However, not one woman – approached during the day and presumably while sober – would agree to have sex with a stranger. Today, as per books like Sex and the Soul, and Dr. Miriam Grossman too, we learn this sort of thing is happening way more than it should to negative effect.

And for this (to bring this post full circle) I blame binge drinking, at least in part.

It’s Canada Day. As I ate my wheaties this morning, listening to the radio, I found myself wondering what did I do last Canada Day? And then, of course, I remembered. I wrote press releases, talked to media, talked to more media, “debated” an abortionist’s wife and just generally tried to cope with the fact that the Governor General was giving Henry Morgentaler an Order of Canada, and that they were naming him for the award on a national holiday when no one would notice. 

So last Canada Day was definitely a low point. We all know fighting the abortion-friendly status quo is a long term struggle though. (Rome wasn’t built in a day?)

Happy Canada Day. (Or Dominion Day, as some prefer.)