Dr Oz Show, January 27, 2012
By Jupiter_2| 1 hour
A dear friend I have made since we both started our 'have a baby' journeys was on the Dr Oz show yesterday, a show I typically never watch. This friend is 45 years old and had written to the show about the plight of older women and what they face when they try to start their families. She was invited to participate in the show. Her story is very touching in that she was pregnant naturally early this year and was forced to terminate the pregnancy due to a very rare complication that had nothing to do with her age or a chromosome defect.
I was very disappointed by this show. The show, instead of presenting a sympathetic view of the difficulties faced by 'older' women trying to conceive, was a forum for the question 'should older women have babies', a totally different aspect of the issue. It is a fact, 'older' women try to have babies and do have babies. The difficulties they face are the same as someone younger but there are additional difficulties that are vastly different.
As for the question, 'should older women have babies', I kept hearing the phrase, 'both sides of the argument are represented', but I heard much more against the issue than for the issue.
I was not impressed with the founder and president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. She came across more as a fire-breathing radical who seemed to believe that if you have not had your children by a certain age, you have lost all rights to motherhood. She kept making reference to 'studies' which she did not name which predicted dire consequences for people who tried to have a baby by artificial means. Clomiphene Citrate is a well vetted medication that has been used for years. Tell me where I can find these studies so I can judge for myself. She did have one comment with which I totally agreed. She alluded to the fact that if you're poor, you don't get a surrogate, you don't get IVF, you get nothing. Unfortunately, it wasn't presented in a light of how expensive infertility treatment is, let's solve the problem (lower the cost, insurance should cover it, etc.) It was presented as being prohibitively expensive, so just don't do it!
Dr. Jain, who has treated older women did state that yes, older women have special issues but they can be dealt with by screening the patient for her state of health, counseling, etc. His arguments, though valid, seemed pallid compared to Jennifer Lahl's. This appeared to be an impression created deliberately by the show. Dr. Jain is a doctor and infertility expert while she apparently does not have these same qualifications. What she does have is the ability to forcefully argue that she is right. Her arguments sounded like demagoguery while his were pedantic.
The show was a sensationalistic presentation of the issue. Yes, the biological clock is a reality and doctors should be talking to their patients about it. That is a medical/health care issue and not one that can be adequately addressed by a show of this type. The show asks the wrong question. The question is not 'should older women have babies'. The reality is, we are having babies, the question is how do we handle/solve the issues involved with that fact.
What did the rest of you think of the show? It actually made my husband angry. He said he hoped other women didn't watch it because it was so ridiculous.
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