Last week experts were warning us about the 'fertility timebomb' but today we are being warned that too many older women are getting pregnant!
Older women are being told that they are very unlikely to get pregnant as their fertility is seriously waning after 35 and so they are ditching contraception in the mistaken belief that they cannot get pregnant past a certain age.
The Family Planning Association (FPA) believes the messages on infertility and age have gone "too far". Although fertility does wane, women can still fall pregnant well into their thirties, forties and even fifties. Abortion rates for women aged 40 to 44 match those for the under 16s, recent figures for England and Wales show. In 2008, both of these groups had an abortion rate of four out of every 1,000 women.
There are many reasons why some women opt for an abortion - including birth abnormalities in the baby, which are more common when the mothers are older. However the FPA says its anecdotal evidence suggests some of the abortions are because women wrongly assumed they couldn't get pregnant because they were too old.
Aimed at women aged 35 and over, the FPA's new campaign 'Conceivable?' reminds women to stay vigilant about unplanned pregnancy and to keep using contraception until after the menopause if they don't wish to become pregnant.
The chief executive of the FPA, Julie Bentley, said: "Whilst the message about fertility declining with age is an important one, it is often overplayed, alongside disproportionate messaging about unplanned teenage pregnancies. It sends an inaccurate message to women and society that only the young fall pregnant and is leading older women to believe their fertility has gone long before it actually has." She said in general all methods of contraception were suitable for the over-35s.
Women aged 30 to 34 continue to have the highest fertility rate - 113.1 live births per 1,000 women. But the rate among women aged 40 and over has more than doubled since 1988, from 5.1 to 12.6 per 1,000 women, and there were more than 26,000 live births to women in this age group in 2008, figures from the Office for National Statistics show.
Emily James of Marie Stopes International said: "Many older women facing an unplanned pregnancy are completely shocked to find themselves in this position - many assume that their irregular periods are due to menopause, and are surprised to learn that they are in fact pregnant."Autism Risk in Older MumsTo add grist to the mill, another study says that women who delay pregnancy are more likely to have a child with autism. This particular research by the University of California found the risk to be 50 per cent higher for a woman of 40 than it is for a woman in her late 20s. A number of other studies have made a similar link but it had been unclear whether the age of the mother or the father was the more important. The risk of having a child with autism increased by 18 per cent - nearly one fifth - for every five-year increase in the mother's age.
9 Feb 2010
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