THE NATION’S clinics are on a heightened state of alert. Women over the age of 30 are getting pregnant! These deadly women are infiltrating hospitals, public transport, even the childcare sections of bookshops. They are plotting to land unwitting doctors with all sorts of difficulties: high blood pressure, diabetes, career-woman crankiness about hours spent waiting for check-ups — complications that the NHS cannot possibly be expected to handle while it is simultaneously engaged in more important challenges such as treating drunks and coaxing billion-pound computers to spell patients’ names properly.
Susan Bewley, consultant obstetrician at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, wants ministers to categorise the epidemic of “middle-age pregnancy” as a health hazard. She advises women to complete their families between the ages of 20 and 25, because the strain put on the NHS by older mothers makes them as great a problem, in her view, as teenage pregnancy.
Tell that to my female friends who are having secret fertility tests every six months while their partners dither; to the wives who have been ditched by husbands who just “weren’t ready” to be fathers. It is wicked to rank women who wait until they can bear a wanted child with feckless teenage mothers who aren’t old enough to have a driving licence.
There’s nothing wrong with pointing out the risks of late pregnancy. It probably would be better if we all sorted out our lives when we were still physically perfect specimens who could go clubbing all night without needing physiotherapy. But that’s rarely possible. Dr Bewley might do better to address the diabolical state of many London maternity units, which hand out patronising leaflets, but regularly run out of epidurals and turn women away to have their babies at home. It’s a bit rich to talk of NHS resources being stretched when there are hardly any to start with.
This week, experts at the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology gave warning about “an epidemic of obesity in young fertile women” that is causing thousands of baby deaths, as well as brain and heart defects, because the mothers have diabetes. Some hospitals units are ordering reinforced beds to bear their weight. Who is irresponsible now?