Archives for January 2010

I love it when science catches up with what most normal people already know.

Scottish scientists have finally figured out why female fertility drops off so rapidly with age: a woman’s “ovarian reserve,” or the potential number of eggs she is born with, declines by almost 90 per cent by age 30. The study from the University of St Andrews and Edinburgh University found that most women are born with 300,000 potential egg cells but by age of 30, only 12 per cent are left on average; by age of 40, the reserve is down to just three per cent.  Though women continue producing eggs throughout their 30s and 40s, the reservoir of potential eggs from which they are taken shrinks to almost nothing. And though the body chooses the best eggs from the reserve, the likelihood is that the quality of the eggs will suffer with age, increasing the difficulty of conception and the risk of an unhealthy baby. The lesson, says study co-author Dr Hamish Wallace, is that women shouldn’t wait too long to try to conceive: “Our research shows that they are generally over-estimating their fertility prospects.

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Andrea is from that department too: Well, not really. But I do have smart, university-educated friends who think that when Hollywood stars have children at 40 it means they can too. We apparently cannot highlight enough, then, that the fertile years are a time limited affair. Sad, really. We’re all so smart, and yet, so dumb.  (And in that category I definitely include myself.)

I like what James O’Keefe did in the past, especially that famous sting operation on ACORN. I’m not too sure what this is about, but I don’t like what it looks like one bit.

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UPDATE: Reader Maryann sends this, which suggests the story might be less embarrassing for O’Keefe than the first reports indicated. I certainly hope so.

Apparently Prime Minister Harper is concerned about reducing maternal mortality. Good. Why is he partnering with a pro-abortion group to achieve this goal?

Kitts says that 30% of maternal deaths can be avoided and infant mortality can be reduced by 20% with proper family planning. Now I quickly understood how family planning could reduce maternal death but when I asked her to explain how family planning could help children live past their 5th birthday, Ms. Kitts became nervous and asked me to turn off my recorder. I asked her the question again and she told me she would have to do the interview later. The coin eventually dropped, the people at ACPD plan to reduce infant mortality by reducing the number of infants born. A major part of family planning for ACPD is abortion.

Now it really doesn’t matter which side of the abortion issue you fall on, when you hear that a government wants to reduce infant mortality, funding abortions in developing countries is likely not what comes to mind. When the Prime Minister says it is troubling that 9 million children die before their 5th birthday, most Canadians don’t think aborting children in developing countries so that they never have a birthday is the solution.

The ACPD–Action Canada for Population Development stems from a population control group that rebranded when that went out of style (I researched this once years ago, and will return to it now. I add that caveat because I’m 90 per cent sure the ACPD is actually hostile to life, but I leave the leeway to return to this in another post when I get a spare second).

From their current web site, we learn they advocate for “sexual rights” internationally, partnering with a Polish group (among others), the Federation for Women and Family Planning. Now Poland has achieved very low maternal mortality, lower than the United States, for example. But the ACPD still needs to partner with them–why? Because abortion is illegal in Poland.

This is inside baseball. But I know this and the Harper government should too. Reducing maternal mortality is laudable. Doing it by providing abortions is not.

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Andrea updates: It’s not clear that there’s a partnership with anyone yet. So another good question is who do you want to do this work? We know who we don’t want, but who should be helping? If you have suggestions, then send them my way. Thanks.

Speaking about a woman who was acquitted of the attempted murder of her very ill 31-year-old daughter, despite admitting to helping her commit suicide:

Last year, two judges questioned whether it was in the public interest to prosecute her for attempted murder, given that she had pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting suicide. One suggested the case be dropped rather than “let this defendant get tangled up in a messy trial for the sake of some legal mumbo jumbo”.

Symbolic of where abortion registers for the mainstream media (it doesn’t), this report about Steve Fonyo Jr. having his Order of Canada revoked ends this way:

The Order of Canada can be terminated when a recipient has been convicted of a criminal offence, the person’s conduct departs from recognized standards of public behaviour or they have been sanctioned by a professional organization. Other Canadians whose Order of Canada has been terminated include former NHL Players’ Association head Alan Eagleson, after he was convicted of fraud, and lawyer T. Sher Singh, whom the Law Society of Upper Canada disbarred after finding him guilty of professional misconduct. There are calls for others to have their orders revoked, including jailed media baron Conrad Black and disgraced Livent founder Garth Drabinsky.

It strikes me as obtuse that whoever wrote this failed to mention the obvious distress of many, many Canadians when Henry Morgentaler received the award. I suppose, however, that we need more time before Morgentaler’s behaviour is recognized as deviating from recognized standards. I maintain that we will recognize his “contribution” to Canadian society as abuse in due course, but we’re not there yet.

At the risk of dating myself and alienating older (the 1970s, ew) and younger (techno 1990s? please) readers, I would like to say how pleased I am to hear news like this:

The 1980s are taking over the cinemas of North America and the UK. Upcoming remakes of ’80s franchises include The A-Team, The Karate Kid, Clash of the Titans, Nightmare on Elm Street and the ultimate Reagan/Thatcher-era movie, Red Dawn. It used to be that the ’80s was “the decade everyone was a bit ashamed of,” with its terrible hair and pop music dominated by synth and saxophone. But after the depressing experience of the ’00s and ’10s, people are starting to feel nostalgic for the greater certainty of the ’80s, not to mention songs like “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Besides, the executives who are running studios today grew up watching the “irony-free” movies of the ’80s, and now they’re trying to re-create their youth. Does this mean that there will be a remake of Mr. T’s Be Somebody Or Be Somebody’s Fool? One can only hope.

Though of course nobody can replace Patrick Swayze…

Read about it, here.

Meanwhile, in the UK, a solution: Sex ed for kids, starting age 7.

Makes me all very glad I am no longer a teen and not yet a parent. All I can think is that national government efforts, whether they emphasise sex ed or abstinence, are doomed to fail even before they begin.

Hey, if it worked for this woman…

After four years of infertility, all it took was a simple download for 30-year-old Lena Bryce to get pregnant, making her the proud mother of Britain’s very first “iPhone baby.”

Last week we learned that your iPhone can save your life, this week, it turns out that it can create life as well. Bryce, who desperately wanted a child, told The Sun: “It began to weigh heavily on us. We were considering IVF and adoption when [my husband] Dudley gave me the iPhone for my 30th. I typed in ‘get pregnant’ and downloaded five apps.”

The young wife chose The Free Menstrual Calendar [iTunes Link], which highlighted in bright pink her most fertile day. She got pregnant two months after downloading the app, and gave birth on the exact day that it predicted.

Yes, I’ve got my tongue firmly in my cheek. Obviously this simple trick won’t work with everyone. But what the heck, it’s worth a shot, no?

A scary column, which serves as a neat reminder to parents to deal with their kids’ moral education 1) themselves and 2) earlier rather than later.