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The Global Infertility Crisis
Women around the world are finding it more and more difficult to conceive, creating what one expert calls an "infertility time bomb."
Business recently took me to Taipei. My escort, a young feminist scholar, urged me to have my fortune told. “Taiwanese women love to visit fortune tellers,” she said. So, overdressed in pumps and a suit, I followed her into a subway station near Dragon Mountain Temple. In brightly lit stalls, behind desks outfitted with computers and caged birds, sat a dozen soothsayers from which to choose.
I selected a middle-aged woman. She asked and I told her the year of my birth. “You are a snake,” she concluded, after calculating something on her computer. Then, fingering the space between my nose and upper lip, she ventured an observation of uncanny accuracy: “You have not been able to bear children.”
I met a middle-aged lawyer in Taipei who said she went through fifteen years of emotionally and physically painful state-subsidized fertility treatments because her in-laws insisted.
Okay, it was a lucky guess; but it was a very good lucky guess. There is a global infertility crisis, particularly among women 35 to 55. According to Family Planning International, about 10 percent of all couples worldwide are or have been infertile. A recent Centers for Disease Control report says 6.1 million U.S. women between the ages 15 and 44 had trouble conceiving; 2.1 million married couples experienced infertility, and 9.2 million women had made use of infertility services.
Globally speaking, women in developed countries are having fewer babies, later in life. These days, first babies tend to be born after the 25th birthday. The decreased birthrate in Taiwan is, along with an increase in infertility, often attributed to marriage delays. The total fertility rate in Taiwan was 1.3 children per woman in 2007, compared to more than 6 children per woman in 1957. The rate of children per woman has also decreased in Germany -- a recent study documents that a growing number of Germans are deliberately forgoing parenthood.
But 21st century childlessness isn’t fully intentional. Increasingly, educated career women are facing the tragedy of wanting to get pregnant but not being able to—empty bellies, no bumps. They are simply too old.
Sheffield University Professor Bill Ledger began warning years ago of an “infertility time bomb” ticking in Europe and the UK. Women with economic and career aspirations are working inflexible hours and putting off childbearing until they are in their late thirties and early forties.
Since the early 1980s, infertile women in most developed regions have not had to settle. Thanks to the availability of infertility treatments the birth rate for women over 30 has risen a bit in recent years. In fact the mean age for childbirth in the UK was 29.3 years in 2007, up from 28.6 years in 2001. In Israel, IVF is free for the first two children, and there are ten times more IVF procedures performed there than in the U.S. Since 1995, in Israel fertility services have been provided for both married and single women under the country’s universal health insurance law. Israel’s health ministry now limits access to some services to only women under 45. Still, there are more fertility clinics in Israel than any other nation in the world and plenty of fertility tourism. The median age of woman seeking fertility treatments is about 34 in Germany, where infertility services are heavily regulated.
But fertility services are priced high. They constitute billion-dollar pharmaceutical and service industries. Only the wealthy can afford to pay full price out of pocket. And no matter who pays, infertility treatments are not a panacea for the global infertility crisis. Fertility care is expensive and sometimes not paid for by government or private insurance, and it usually doesn’t work for older women.
There are other concerns. The availability of affordable treatments can cause conflict within families. I met a middle-aged lawyer in Taipei who said she went through fifteen years of emotionally and physically painful state-subsidized fertility treatments because her in-laws insisted. “I almost wish there weren’t any such thing as fertility treatments,” she said.
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Anita L. Allen is the Henry R. Silverman professor of law and professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. She writes about everyday ethics, health, and the right to privacy for scholarly journals and the popular press.
I'm having trouble understanding how this is a "Global Infertility Crisis". Couples in developed and developing countries choose to have babies later in life; women tend to have more fertility issues as they age. You can certainly raise concerns around the impact of economic development on birthrates and how that changes demographics in the US and Europe. But that still doesn't equate to a global "fertility crisis".
I thought this article was going to be more like Children of Men. Instead, it's a tired plot line of Sex and the City. We're at 6.5 billion people. I think we can afford a little infertility.
this would be a much more interesting article -- and more accurate-- if it had discussed the REASONS for a "global infertility crisis". Being "too old" is not the reason women as young as their twenties and thirties are unable to conceive. What about environmental and emotional reasons?
A "fertility crisis" implies that this world needs a higher population. Other than the Vatican and the Mormons, who believes that's the case? The real crisis is overpopulation.
Spend some time (hours and hours) reading the insightful posts at http://globaleconomydoesmatter.blogspot.com/ and you will soon be convinced that global fertility is a problem.
Birth rates are plummeting worldwide.
The real crisis is the worldwide decline in TFR. Check out the facts.
You can start at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127r ank.html
and then spend 10-20 hours at http://globaleconomydoesmatter.blogspot.com/
Why does the article leave out a significant part of the equation, that men and women in the developed world are marrying later now than they ever have and are therefore delaying childbirth in many cases? Yes, there are some women who intentionally delay marriage and childbirth because they are intensely career-focused, but I think they're in the minority. A lot of single, childless women of childbearing age are not so by choice. I am one of them. With no prospects for husbands in sight, many single women have no choice but to work hard at their careers because they have to provide for themselves.
Also, it has been established that male fertility declines with age, too. Let's not pin all the blame for infertility on women.
When we don't have any children starving I'll consider that infertility is a major issue. In the meantime, this "issue" gives couples who want children the opportunity to become parents to the milllions of orphaned children all over the world. This, adopting a child, would be the greatest gift they could give to the child/dren and the world.
Women having children after 35 is generally a risky process, so it shouldn't be of any surprise that women in that age group would find it difficult. And it isn't so much that more and more women 35 and so on are finding it difficult to have children, it's that more women 35 and so on are trying in the first place. Still, the Children of Men connection was delightfully eerie.
I am trying very hard to have sympathy for women who can't conceive but I find it difficult. What makes them think they deserve everything, that their lives should be perfect? They made a decision to wait, until they were more financial stable, until they had gone to school, until they were more mature, until they had gotten a good career, with that comes the cons that you may have trouble getting pregnant, if having a baby was more important than all those other things that you did why did you wait? People need to make priorities and realize that the things that they put on the bottom of the list don't just happen later, they might not happen at all.
Reply to my readers. Thanks for the feedback. I completely agree that there is no shortage of people on this planet. I also agree that we need to take better care of the children and adults in need around the world. I disagree though that men and women who want to bear children but cannot due to changing economic and social patterns merit no empathy or advice. I have found a completly satisfying solution to infertility in adoption. I regret that others don't view adoption as the perfect solution to their personal pain in a well-populated world with pockets of overpopulation. Thanks again for reading. Anita Allen PS: I have never watched '"Sex and the City" but I think I am making a different point.
I thought that there would be more information in this. Is the problem that people are waiting too long to try to conceive? Or is the average age of conception rising because it takes longer to conceive when you have to have more medical intervention?
My friends are 25-35 and an inordinate number of them are having problems conceiving. Some problems with men, some with the women - some need surgery to fix something, some need ivf, some have no answers.
I keep wondering if it just feels like more and more people have problems because I'm in the age group now, and people don't seem to talk about it publicly, or if it has always been this way.
I think it is an emotional crisis - a personal crisis... perhaps not something putting the world's population at risk, but individual lives are affected.
Why should any woman care? After all careers and being like men matter more to a good number of them. Men can't make babies so why when women are so interested in being like men care about having such a "growth" inside of them? Just a curiosity on my part, any career woman want to give me a reason?
I live in a lower middle class neighborhood and day after day I watch Hispanic girls and ladies walking down the street with one in the belly one or two in a stroller and two or three dragging.a long behind.I believe the reason they and other minority women are'nt haveing problems conceiving is because they handle stress better than the mijority of other ladies. When they get stressed they let it out very loudly! When have was the last time you saw a upper or middle class lady cussing some one out? These ladies seem to think that its wrong to let it out.They werent raised that way or its not lady like. Well this is true and thats the problem! Women let stress build until they either blow up or hold it in and let it rot on the inside! I really beleve that its toxic, and changes your chemical make up to the point that you cant conceve? Another reason I believe minority woman have no problem conceiving is because they have a better suport system than others do.They stick together and help each other out with raising the kids and dealing with lifes ups and downs! They don't play, and they use gang warfare! When they have a problem they bring all there girlfriends with them! Ladies I know I sound condisending, I can't help it Im a typical white male american and I was raised that way! ha!ha! So the next time your stressed out and your husband is giving you shit slap him up side his head and say" Hey you dumb motherf&%ker can't you see Im trying to concieve here"!!! If you can,t do that, just do what most women do, go in the next room and cuss us out just lowd enough so we cant under stand you, and then when we say" What was that all about" just do what you always do and say"Nothing dear"!Dont Worry let it out and be happy!
I don't see this as a problem. I think it's nature trying to tell humans to slow down the breeding. Simply stated, there are far too many of us on the planet. And there are millions of homeless/poor/neglected kids already who need parents or just some funding to keep going. Adoption, fostering and sponsorship opportunities are out there. Take advantage of them and stop insisting that only biological kids count! We now live in a global village, not in discrete geopolitical areas, and the argument that there are not enough kids being born in affluent places like the U.S., or Europe, and something has to be done to raise fertility rates is nuts, not to mention selfish.
Cinghiale -
Before you go around making yourself feel smug by bashing Catholics and Mormons at least get your facts right. I can not speak for Mormons, but as a devoted Catholic I can assure you, the Vatican, or any other part of the Church does not believe the world needs a high population. The Catholic Church believes in the sanctity of life, from it's natural creation to it's natural death. The Church does not believe in fertility treatments to increase the population, nor does it believe in birth control to decrease the population. Life is a gift from God. If He chooses to give it it should be embraced. We Catholics do not go around populating the earth by any means to increase population. Oh, and by the way, haven't you figured out yet that Catholic bashing is so passe?
When is the world ever going to become a safe place for mothers and children? I do think people should get over their own love affair with their genetic material and adopt. And yes, the world is overpopulated - do people have no conscience about that?
I don't care who wants to have babies, or what they have to pay to get them, as long as they want to have one. But, I do get very annoyed that I end up paying part of the bill for someone else going through fertility treatments. Not being able to bear a child is not a life-threatening condition. Why does insurance pay for it? It's also wrong when insurance pays for erectile dysfunction medication- that isn't life-threatening either. But, heaven forbid your doctor wants you to stay in the hospital for an extra couple of days after a necessary surgery - insurance companies balk at paying for that - they kick people out before they are ready. But they pay for in vitro and viagra? You want to have babies, you want to have sex? These are optional, not required, and not entitlements. Why do insurance companies pay for these things? because they make money for the insurance company.
Fermatty/Cinghiale: clearly the Catholic Church as an entity wants a lower population or else they would embrace condoms to stem the spread of HIV/AIDS, but alas they are busy clinging to archaic doctrine while hundreds of thousands of people die from a horrible disease because their church says condoms are bad.
clubed60090 - So insurance probably shouldn't cover Xanax or Prozac either. Just makes life livable. Or Ritalin, that just enhances performance. And that broken finger isn't covered, it is just nice to have all ten. You can go on without it.
Health insurance isn't just to cover life threatening issues, but also those health issues that make life more livable. Persons who are suffering from infertility and have medical interventions available should have the opportunity to pursue those options.
Hmm... on a planet that is heating up, getting over-crowded and running out of sea-life and rainforests our own patterns and Mother Nature are causing us to have fewer offspring. Doesn't really sound like a crisis to me.
Go to Nebraska, plenty of kids wandering aimlessly around there...
I don't see the crisis. Population control is the best idea the Chinese ever had.
Like most physiological problems in the "modern" world we are being poisoned not just by the environment, but by excessive medication both prescribed and over the counter, and by manufactured food-like substances containing a myriad of chemicals of unknown effect. Early obesity, Type 2 diabetes, childhood heart disease, autism, may very well be linked to what pharmaceuticals and corporate factory food producers have done to the typical diet all over the world, so why should fertility be exempt
It's just s well as all the world's problems that seem to be coming to a head, are largely the result of too many people trying to live on this planet! Is the planet, nature trying to tell us something?
This is not an "Infertility Crisis." This is life remaining how it has always been. Women over 35 have always had a harder time conceiving. Just because you cannot become pregnant at 40 doesn't mean you weren't able to at 20. That's not infertility, that's age. This is like saying there's an infertility crisis because women over 60 very rarely have children. Duh. We always knew that.
Thank you.
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