how the transition from country to city discourages child-bearing
how religion impacts how many children parents have
what is the US birth rate, is it high enough?
can we just import immigrants to alleviate the low birth rate?
has increased prosperity encouraged people to have more children?
how has the purpose of sex changed after the sexual revolution?
how does the demographic crisis threaten entitlement programs?
what do we learn from the declining birth rate in Japan?
how does population growth impact stock market performance?
Dr. J’s wonderful blog is here. Please give it a visit! She has really been writing a lot of her own thoughts into her posts lately. It’s very fun and engaging!
The record for Britain’s oldest women to give birth will be broken next month by 66 year old Elizabeth Munro, from Cambridge. It is thought that Ms Munro, who is single and a successful business woman, travelled to the Ukraine to become pregnant using donor eggs and IVF treatment.
In the UK, health trusts determine which women will be eligible for IVF treatment on the National Health Service (NHS), and factors limiting availability include the age of the woman. Not many trusts will consider providing NHS treatment for women over about 39 years old. However, some private clinics, which are not obliged to follow NHS guidelines, will offer treatment to women up to the age of 50, although it is rare for them to consider treating women older than this.
[…]Ms Munro, who is due to give birth next month by Caesarean section, claims she still feels 39 and is fitter than many women a third her age. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, she said: ‘It’s not my physical age that’s important – it’s how I feel inside.’ She added: ‘I don’t have to defend what I have done. It’s between me, my baby and no-one else’.
The childless divorcee travelled to the Ukraine for IVF treatment and is planning to give birth at a clinic in Cambridge in the next month.
She will be nearing 80 when the child becomes a teenager.
I also note that IVF is covered for women under 40 by the state-run National Health Service, (as are breast implants), just like in Canada. Another reason that Christians should oppose socialized medicine.
Betsy makes this snarky comment:
Yet another example of how selfish people can be. So much for what’s best for the child. I want it, and I can get it, so I will. And of course the doctors aren’t willing to turn down a buck. So sad. Poor kids with moms who will likely die while the kids are in college. How kind. I’m willing to bet old women are doing this because their grown children are too selfish to provide grandchildren. And what 20-year-old wants to spend his time caring for his mom after her hip replacement surgery or while she’s dealing with dementia?
I note that Ms. Munro is divorced, so her child will be raised without a father in the home. I just think that when people begin a new realtionship with a living thing, that they should count the cost of the relationship and make sure that they can set aside the time, money and effort required to take care of that other person/animal/whatever. It’s no good to treat children like property, and no good to treat husbands like property either.
Cradling her twin boys in her arms, the world’s oldest mother confidently proclaimed that longevity ran in her family.
But just two and half years on, Maria Carmen del Bousada’s boasts have been proved sadly wrong.
The 69-year-old, who admitted lying about her age to receive fertility treatment in the U.S, has died from cancer.
[…]Orphaned before reaching school, her sons, Christian and Pau, will have to rely on others to find out about her.
[…]Earlier this month, Britain’s oldest mother Elizabeth Adeney, who had a boy in May, was 67. Like Miss Bousada, she too was childless and single when she underwent fertility treatment using a donor egg and donor sperm.As for Miss Bousada’s cancer, it is understood that the former shop worker had been told that the drugs used during her fertility treatment may have hastened the advance of the disease.
[…]It is known that some types of cancer are sensitive to hormones associated with both pregnancy and fertility treatment. Miss Bousada told doctors in Los Angeles that she was 55 when she travelled there to undergo IVF treatment.
Critics, including her own family, called the pensioner, who went through the menopause 18 years before her £20,000 treatment, ‘selfish and irresponsible’.
After the birth she admitted lying about her age and predicted she would live to 101 as her mother had done.
‘I have every reason to believe longevity runs in my family,’ she said.
Please take a look at the related post below on how children are affected by single motherhood, because there is an interesting debate with a single mother in the comments, and you can see how they think.
Canada has a single-payer health care system. Everyone pays the government based on their total earned income, and then the government decides who will be treated, based on special interest groups “need”. So it’s a disdvantage to be hard-working and prudent, since you end up paying taxes but never using any services. For example, politically correct services like taxpayer-funded abortions, in vitro fertilization, and sex changes are provided, but necessary care like MRIs are rationed with waiting lists. For some treatments, you can wait for years. And the government restricts the number of doctors in order to keep costs down, since fewer doctors means fewer claims to pay.
Now you may say to yourself, “Big deal! At least it’s fair! Radical leftist politicians love single-payer health care, and they get in line for health care right behind ordinary guys/gals just like me! We’re all in it together, eh?”
Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams will undergo heart surgery later this week in the United States.
Deputy premier Kathy Dunderdale confirmed the treatment at a news conference Tuesday, but would not reveal the location of the operation or how it would be paid for.
“He has gone to a renowned expert in the procedure that he needs to have done,” said Ms. Dunderdale, who will become acting premier while Mr. Williams is away for three to 12 weeks.
“In consultation with his own doctors, he’s decided to go that route.”
Mr. Williams’ decision to leave Canada for the surgery has raised eyebrows over his apparent shunning of Canada’s health-care system.
“It was never an option offered to him to have this procedure done in this province,” said Ms. Dunderdale, refusing to answer whether the procedure could be done elsewhere in Canada.
[…]During the 2008 federal election, Mr. Williams vehemently opposed the Conservative government, launching his “Anything But Conservative” — which has been credited with keeping the Tories from winning any seats in the province.
Anything but conservative, indeed, comrade Williams!
Jean Chretien takes his own family to private health clinics. In fact, he doesn’t just use U.S.-style private clinics. He actually goes to private clinics in the U.S.
And he flies to those U.S. private clinics on Canadian government jets, paid for by Canadian tax dollars.
According to access-to-information documents obtained by the Canadian Alliance, on Feb. 8, 1999, Chretien and two aides flew from Vancouver to Minnesota, home of the Mayo Clinic. According to air force flight logs, they flew back to Ottawa that afternoon with Chretien’s daughter. And on Dec. 11 of the same year, Chretien went back to the clinic, this time just with his wife and his aide.
These trips were courtesy of the Canadian Forces 412th Squadron, which has flown literally thousands of nautical miles taking Chretien back and forth to the clinic.
Liberal MP Belinda Stronach, who is battling breast cancer, travelled to California last June for an operation that was recommended as part of her treatment, says a report.
Stronach’s spokesman, Greg MacEachern… said the decision was made because the U.S. hospital was the best place to have it done due to the type of surgery required.
But these Liberals are just regular leftists. What about the socialist leader Jack Layton? Surely a socialist wouldn’t take advantage of free market capitalism to be treated unequally, would he? That would be so greedy and capitalist!
NDP Leader Jack Layton, who’s campaigning as the defender of public health care, had surgery at a private clinic in the 1990s, The Canadian Press has learned. Layton had hernia surgery at the Shouldice Hospital, a private facility in the Toronto suburb of Thornhill, while he was serving as a Toronto city councillor.
WINTERY KNIGHT 