Sunday, May 4, 2008

The nulliparity epidemic

We are currently facing a nulliparity epidemic of previously unseen proportions. More and more women are choosing not to have children, or are having them rather late in life when they do choose to have babies. Now, you'd think that this is nobody's business except the women involved, but let me give you some facts about nulliparity and cancer risk:
* The younger a woman has her first child, the lower her risk of developing breast cancer during her lifetime.
* A woman who has her first child after the age of 35 has approximately twice the risk of developing breast cancer as a woman who has a child before age 20.
* A woman who has her first child around age 30 has approximately the same lifetime risk of developing breast cancer as a woman who has never given birth.
* Having more than one child decreases a woman’s chances of developing breast cancer. In particular, having more than one child at a younger age decreases a woman’s chances of developing breast cancer during her lifetime.
* Although not fully understood, research suggests that pre-eclampsia, a pathologic condition that sometimes develops during pregnancy, is associated with a decrease in breast cancer risk in the offspring, and there is some evidence of a protective effect for the mother.
* After pregnancy, breastfeeding for a long period of time (for example, a year or longer) further reduces breast cancer risk by a small amount.


As you can see, this is everybody's business, because it's cancer. Women who claim they don't want to have babies, or who want to put off having them until later in life, are obviously very misinformed about their risks. They need to know that their irresponsible lack of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding is dangerous, and it is an unfair burden to taxpayers to shoulder the health insurance needed to treat breast cancer for nulliparous women. Additionally, it's pretty disgusting for these women to think they should be able to enjoy sex without the responsibility and consequences of having babies.

In order to combat this epidemic, I propose that the government step in and do some or all of the following:

1. Make it illegal for nulliparous women to obtain and use contraception. Responsible people (those who are mothers) should still be permitted to obtain and use it, because they've demonstrated that they care enough about their bodies and society to have babies.

2. Force insurers to pay for IVF for socially awkward girls who may not be able to get pregnant the traditional way--and for girls as young as 13, so that they don't get sexually transmitted diseases or pick up the bad habit of enjoying sex. Even though there may be health complications for younger girls having babies, it's more important that they not be excluded from having babies when their peers are doing so as well. It's also necessary to get their cancer risk as low as possible, and since having children and breastfeeding before the age of 20 lowers that risk, starting as young as possible is a smart thing to do.

3. Launch a massive marketing campaign with billboards, magazine ads, tv commercials, and viral ads to really nail it into women's heads that they NEED to have babies, as soon as possible, and that not having them is shameful and makes them a terrorist.

4. Push through as many fertility drugs as possible, even if they aren't known to be completely safe, because time is of the essence--we need women to get knocked up and FAST, before their nulliparity costs the nation billions of dollars in cancer treatment.

5. Set up pregnancy clubs all over the place, where people go to talk about their attempts to become pregnant, get called out by their peers on why they haven't gotten pregnant yet (shaming is a great tool), and where personal trainers can work with women on their techniques for getting pregnant.

6. Force employers to dock employees' pay if they have not yet had a baby or become pregnant. That, and give huge bonuses to those who do.

7. Discreetly encourage verbal and physical abuse of women who continue to defy the moral imperative to have babies.

8. If all else fails, put the bitches in concentration camps and repeatedly inseminate them until they are knocked up. Make sure they are interred long enough to birth and breastfeed the child for the amount of time required to reduce the cancer risk. Yeah, they'll bitch about "freedom", but they would expect the rest of us to pick up their health care tab when the time came, so fuck 'em. That, and it's just plain disgusting to see a woman not sacrificing herself to a life of motherhood; who the hell do these bitches think they are anyway? No one wants to see that shit.

15 comments:

anayi said...

Perfect. Your cleverness brings me joy!

Liam Andrews said...

#5 could also be improved by having incentives for giving birth, or even getting pregnant and then miscarrying, because the effort is important too. It could be something like a keychain for the first baby, a t-shirt for the second, and so forth. In fact, this would be a particularly good area for government to get involved. Legislation could ensure that women who have lots and lots of children receive higher salaries.

idontusethisanymore said...

OMG, I love it. :D

OMG said...

You are a nasty judgemental human. Let's hope someday when you suffer a disease of aging that god finds you and finds you in the care of people who are empathic and caring and not souless as you are.

RioIriri said...

Dear troll ("omg"),
Are you kidding? Please tell me that no one was really dumb enough to think this was anything but satire...

Anonymous said...

You are a genius. What a great post! :)

revintraining said...

I love it; you're a master of satire.

JeanC said...

BRAVO!!!!!! Standing ovation from North Idaho on a brilliant bit of writing!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Maybe I'm missing something here. So are you saying that the claims pregnancy can prevent Cancer, is some sort of conspiracy to convince women to make more babies even if that's not benificial to them?

Like you're saying the claims that getting pregnant preventing Cancer, is more an issue of researchers cherry-picking information, so that they can claim it's the woman's fault for gettin Cancer cause she didn't get herself knocked up early enough in life?

I also happen to be in the school of people who belive there are people in this world, who should just not be parents. So the idea of suggesting everyone get preggers, seems to be ignoring the effects that might have on the future generation of kids. As in, them being raised by less than capable parents.

I also feel I'm exceptional in that, I'm willing to admit I might not be the best person to have a kid for various reasons. I could say it's Asperger's Syndrome, but my dad is Aspie and has wanted kids since he could remember. Perhaps it's that I can barely be responsible in operating an oven, let alone in taking care of kids.

Also, I feel being so emotional about caring for other things, that I feel miserable if I let a virtual pet die, might make things difficult. Then again, it's better than parents who seem to not give a damn both ways about their kids *cough*mycousin'sfamily*cough*

RioIriri said...

violet_yoshi,

I'm reading your comment, and realizing that, because of the very specialized lens through which I view the world, my very dry tongue-in-cheek is probably a little TOO dry.

I often forget when I'm writing here that my blog readers aren't my LJ friends--the latter of whom are very much aware that I am firmly, unapologetically, and irreversibly childfree.

So this piece was written from the POV of me, a woman who has heard all KINDS of stupid rationalizations as to why I should have a baby RIGHT NOW OMG, and if I don't, I will regret it, and I'm irresponsible, and I'm destroying the universe.

So do NOT worry, none of this was meant to be taken seriously--it's a satire intended to parallel the busybody assholes who poke their noses into our adipose tissue and claim they're doing it because it's 1. for our own good, 2. for the sake of society, or 3. because the idea of fat people/childfree people is OMG SCARY for them.

Anonymous said...

Don't worry. I got it. And I laughed. What they do to us fatties sounds ridiculous when applied to other groups (like childbearing aged women). It's a great point to make. And... plus... you're funny!

ibex said...

This post is made of win.

narcojloleptic said...

geeze, I was about to flip out! I thought you were serious!!
You need to put a warning at the beginning and end of that.
"Caution: The Following is Satire"

I have a hole plan on how to keep dumb people from breeding more dumb people, including a license to birth (some places require you to have a license to have a pet).

I found a great article on that and I have it posted in my myspace blog.
http://www.myspace.com/narcojloleptic
I'd give you the direct link for the article, but I can't find it right now.


EVERYBODY should watch the movie "Idiocracy" to see just what evolution seems to be favoring.
At least watch the intro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upyewL0oaWA



by the way... I'm totally serious.

Anonymous said...

Wow, I had to read all the way down to here to realize the writer is offering satire, not an honest opinion. What a relief. I agree with the previous poster who said a warning label up front would be helpfup and appreciated.

Anonymous said...

Wow what a relief to know this is satire, but I had to read all the way down to here on the comments before I knew that. So I agree with the previous poster who said a warning label up front would be very helpful.