Postponing Motherhood Places Too Much Faith in Reproductive Science: Experts
By Sharon Kirkey, Postmedia News,
Montreal Gazette
| 11. 17. 2011
The growing numbers of women postponing motherhood are placing too much blind faith in science to help them conceive when they're ready to have a baby.
That's the warning being issued by this country's pregnancy specialists.
The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada — which has just issued new guidelines to doctors on "advanced reproductive age" and fertility — worries that women are overestimating the success rates of artificial procreation.
Short of using a younger woman's donated eggs, no assisted baby-making technology today can get around the reality that the supply and quality of a woman's eggs shrinks over time — and that by the time a woman reaches her early to mid-30s, each egg offers less chance of pregnancy and a higher risk of miscarriage.
More women over 40 are now seeking treatment for infertility — even though the failure rate for that age group is close to 90 per cent, fertility experts say.
"Fertility treatments aren't a sure-fire route to pregnancy — their rates of success are greatly influenced by age-related declines in fertility," Dr. Allison Case...
Related Articles
By Tory Shepherd, The Guardian | 07.17.2026
Over eight years, Ethan and his wife went through nine rounds of IVF in Melbourne.
They travelled to Spain for two more, without success.
“I thought maybe the universe had decided we’re not supposed to have kids,” says Ethan, who...
By Oscar Lopez, The Guardian | 07.19.2026
Diogo Amaro met his future husband, Loup, in Paris and from the first date, he made one thing clear: he wanted to have children.
“Right off the bat, I was like: ‘If I’m going to be in a relationship with...
By Risa Cromer, The Conversation | 07.17.2026
Media coverage of recent developments in embryo gene editing might seem to suggest that gene-edited babies are close to becoming a reality. As tech billionaires eager to profit off of techno-eugenics invest in “designer baby” technologies, attempts to normalize heritable genome editing – which remains unsafe and raises significant ethical and societal concerns – are especially dangerous. It’s worth taking a closer look at these developments and what they mean, in a way that pushes back on narratives normalizing the...