My friend André Schutten highlighted a delightful little piece of government propaganda for me today. An ad ran before he could watch a news item and it was the Government of Ontario advertising, wait for it, birth control.
You can read his blog post about it and watch the ad, here.
Meanwhile, let me add my own remarks to his. How out of touch is this? While hard stats are difficult to come by some estimate near 90% of North American women use the birth control pill at some point in their lives. I’ve said this before, how every woman/girl is indoctrinated in the fine art of avoiding pregnancy. Our birth rate is rock bottom low, far below replacement and somehow no one, apparently, in the Ontario Government has noticed that people are required to be in the province to pay taxes so they can fund ads telling us not to have children.
Courtesy of constantly being told to not get pregnant, by the time women do try, it’s often too late. This article relates the rising rates of infertility: “In 1984, the estimated percentage of couples with fertility problems was 5.4%. In 1992, this number increased to 8.5%. And today, the estimated prevalence (total number of couples with infertility) is up to 15.7%.”
So many women, apparently getting towards 20%, so one in five, have struggles getting pregnant. And under these conditions what do we get but chirpy ads making kids out to be demons to be avoided. It’s because we make children out as a burden that women wait longer and longer. And then, wait for it, the government, having encouraged you to wait, wait, wait (or alternatively, they’ll fund your abortion) will pay for IVF, an expensive procedure that is difficult on women’s bodies with a low success rate.
But wait, there’s more I want to rant about here:
Ontario has a healthcare problem. If you want a simple procedure that might help you get pregnant, you’ll sit on a wait list for a good long time until an ob-gyn can see you. It could take six months, maybe more. Some people can’t find family doctors. So the province is utterly failing in the delivery of healthcare, which more than advertising birth control, is what this little ad was supposed to be about. People wait and wait and wait, oftentimes in pain for simple procedures. Yet via this government ad, they’d love for us to believe they actually offer anything approximating service in healthcare.
It’s amazing, the logical and moral inconsistency captured in one 15 second ad.
Little zen girl isn’t letting government propaganda bother her. No sireee.
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