Infertility and Ignorance
January 28, 2019The Topic: Infertility and IgnoranceThe News Story: Here’s Why the Birth Rate Is So Low in the United StatesThe New Research: Sterile Fantasies The U.S. birth rate dropped to a 30-year low in 2018, and at the same time that the mainstream media is celebrating huge pro-abortion victories in New York, they also sound the alarm that Americans aren’t having enough babies to replace themselves. HealthLine ran a story on the causes of this huge fertility drop, among which are delayed marriage and childbearing, financial concerns, a higher career focus among women, and better use of contraception. Another reason cited is that fertility treatments may give women a false sense of security that even if they wait, they’ll have a shot at parenthood. One reproductive endocrinologist told HealthLine, “The medications and procedures like intrauterine insemination and in vitro fertilization that we use have been incredibly successful at helping couples conceive,” but adds that their prohibitive cost and lack of insurance coverage make them less accessible than women often believe, and that they are better for certain age groups than others. What such experts should have added—but didn’t—is that the public is often wildly overoptimistic about how successful such treatments really are, and about how long fertility lasts. Indeed, a recent study out of Denmark indicates that many sub-replacement-fertility populations seem to share this ignorance. (Source: Kimberly Holland, “Here’s Why the Birth Rate Is So Low in the United States,” HealthLine, January 22, 2019.) The New Research: Sterile Fantasties Often under the influence of professors, a growing number of university students around the world decide to delay parenthood and family life. Do the students who make such decisions realize the biological challenges they may face as a consequence of such delays? A new Danish study reveals that many university students remain woefully ig
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