Article Summary #15

Author Unknown. Unplanned pregnancy warning to older women over 35. BBC News. 9 Feb 2010.

Experts fear that older women are doing away with contraception in belief that they are not able to get pregnant past a certain age. The Family Planning Association (FPA) thinks that the message of infertility and age has put wrong ideas into women’s heads. Although infertility does happen, a woman can still be fertile well into her forties, and even fifties. For England and Wales, the abortion rate for women between 40 and 44 has matched the rates of those girls under 16. In 2008, both of these groups had an abortion rate of 4 out of 1,000 women. A common reason why older women get abortions is because there is more likely for a birth abnormality in the baby. But, FPA says that it is because of the unreliable evidence that women wrongly assume that they could not get pregnant because they are too old.

Aimed for women 35 and over, the FPA is putting on a new campaign ‘Conceivable?’ that reminds women to stay alert about unplanned pregnancies and to keep using the contraception until after menopause if they don’t want to become pregnant. Chief executive of the FPA says that the message of fertility is declining with age is important, its often an inconsistent message. She also says that it sends inaccurate messages to women and society that only the young can get pregnant, and it leads the older women to think their fertility is gone long before it actually is. Women 30 to 34 have the highest fertility rate- 113.1 births per 1,000 women. The rate among 40 year old women has doubled since 1988 from 5.1 to 12.6 per 1,000 births. In 2008, there was 26,000 births to women over 40.