"You just keep having children. This is how you keep a man," Sylvia, mother of twelve, told Maternowska. "If you don't give [children] to him, he doesn't give [money] to you.... And sometimes even if you do give, you lose anyhow. Life is hard." Women would do anything to keep a man. There was a brisk trade in sexy outfits and wild rumors circulated about love potions, some from voodoo healers, some home-made, including rice and beans cooked in water in which a woman had washed her underwear.

That's a passage about Haiti. Haiti, poorest country in the Western hemisphere…is there enough rice in Haiti to waste on a man who might leave? Or can a woman cook dirt cookies in her underwear water, too? Not uplifting questions, sure, but what exactly did the World Bank so fear from these people that they were willing to endorse the literal dragging of Indian women to sterilization clinics and worse, the measures that in China all too often resulted in forced third-trimester abortions?

Well, eugenicists feared the introduction of the Pill into the First World would cause "the swamping of the Nordic and Anglo-Saxon races by imbeciles, blacks, Asians, and eastern and southern Europeans," and technically, that happened. By the late sixties, books like the Population Bomb had softened that message, focusing on India where the (not improbable) prophesy was that "squalid, teeming slums and mass starvation" would beget "imminent political collapse." Ahhh, political collapse, our generation knows it well! But then what?

Particularly after the Communist takeover of China in 1949, Washington policymakers began to fear the rise of an increasingly resentful—and rapidly proliferating—global population of poor people who were easily susceptible to radical ideas and militaristic leaders. But in the end such people, if they threatened anyone, were mainly a danger to themselves.

As we know from the poor countries in which we've brought about political collapse lately!

Helen Epstein's whole review is worth reading — and the NYRB is worth subscribing to and makes a great gift for dads! — but here's a critical line. As anyone who has ever been in love knows, treating others humanely might come more naturally when you suspect they might have the capacity to hurt you.

The greatest threats to the global climate come from China and the West, where birthrates are extremely low. The future of the planet depends less on the number of babies born in Uganda than on the choices we in the West make, which, at the moment, are not good ones. As recently as 2004, a Japanese study found that when shopping for cars, Americans cared more about the size of the cup holder than fuel efficiency.[10] Our habits may be shifting, but ever so slowly.

The Strange History Of Birth Control? [New York Review Of Books]
Earlier: Is It About Time We Made A "Pregnancy Pact" Of Our Own? [Jezebel]

Related: New Limits To Growth Revive Malthusian Fears [WSJ]
RU-486: Brought To You By John D. Rockefeller [Some weird website I don't think is related to antiabortion zealots]

"For fertilization to take place, sperm must be able to reach the egg and then penetrate its outer layer," the L.A. Times notes. "Sperm that don't move well...may be unable to do so." As "lifestyle"
can be a a factor when "sperm that don't move well," I'm forced to surmise that too much weed renders one's junk unable to do anything but lie on the proverbial couch of one's innards.

Anyway! When couples are having fertility problems, 67% of women seek treatment before their male partners do, and almost half of women surveyed by the IntegraMed company reported that their partners only sought help when pressured. "Both the male and female partner should be worked up simultaneously," Dr. Walsh says. "Men are just as deserving of a comprehensive evaluation." Walsh adds that part of the issue is that women can just go to their gynecologist when facing reproductive problems, whereas men don't have the same kind of go-to doctor with whom they feel comfortable. All the same: if you're having issues with babymaking, make sure to get everyone involved a full medical workup.

Male
Biological Clock 'Ticks Too' [BBC]
Men
Can Be Infertile Too [LAT]

And Italy, (where the birth rate is now about 1.3) isn't the only sumptuous locale where the birth rate is falling drastically short of the 2.1 "replacement rate": Greece and Spain are low on kids, too. But not, somehow, by choice: a European Commission survey found that the average European woman wants 2.36 children — and in Italy the answer was actually higher than average! But here's the catch.

According to Hans-Peter Kohler of the University of Pennsylvania, analysis of recent studies showed that “high fertility was associated with high female labor-force participation . . . and the lowest fertility levels in Europe since the mid-1990s are often found in countries with the lowest female labor-force participation.” In other words, working mothers are having more babies than stay-at-home moms.

How can this be? A study released in February of this year by Letizia Mencarini, the demographer from the University of Turin, and three of her colleagues compared the situation of women in Italy and the Netherlands. They found that a greater percentage of Dutch women than Italian women are in the work force but that, at the same time, the fertility rate in the Netherlands is significantly higher (1.73 compared to 1.33). In both countries, people tend to have traditional views about gender roles, but Italian society is considerably more conservative in this regard, and this seems to be a decisive difference. The hypothesis the sociologists set out to test was borne out by the data: women who do more than 75 percent of the housework and child care are less likely to want to have another child than women whose husbands or partners share the load. Put differently, Dutch fathers change more diapers, pick up more kids after soccer practice and clean up the living room more often than Italian fathers; therefore, relative to the population, there are more Dutch babies than Italian babies being born. As Mencarini said, “It’s about how much the man participates in child care.”

In other words:

By this logic, the worst sort of system is one that partly buys into the modern world — expanding educational and employment opportunities for women — but keeps its traditional mind-set. This would seem to define the demographic crisis that Italy, Spain and Greece find themselves in — and, perhaps, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other parts of the world.

Put another way, stay away from Catholics, Asia hands and maybe classics majors. Society doesn't want their genes anyway. (Guess who's hereby off the hook?) Go find a Danish boyfriend and move to Italy once you're officially Euro! There's your pregnancy pact.

No Babies? [NYT Mag]

Tiny Voices Defy Child Marriage In Yemen [NYT]

Related: Mayor Plans of "Listening Posts" On Teen Pregnancy [Gloucester Times]

But you know, at the end of the day, they have a kid who had an abortion and I'm sorry, getting an abortion sucks. (I know some of you disagree, but whatever, I maintain it sucks.) And seeing your kid in pain sucks, especially over something like this, so you can see why they got pissed, even if they really shouldn't have dont any of this.

And then there's Cindi. Just trying to undo what would have been a disastrous situation for both kids, a little pushy, thinks she's doing everyone a favor. And now: mugshot all over the news, the target of all manner of righteous ire from the Jesus freak contingent, a year in jail.

But hey, every cloud has a silver lining and yes it is raining down on the Georgia therapist population.

Also: parental notification laws = suck.

Woman Pretended To Be Mom Of Girl Who Got Abortion, Say Officials [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

My best college friend, the one who got married in Israel, she's apparently breastfeeding. I just got an email about the kid. 10 POUNDS 2 OUNCES?? Oh, phew…C-section. What's so wrong with C-sections anyway? What's so wrong with baby formula? French women supposedly smoke throughout pregnancy so their babies will be smaller. True story. Not that that keeps French men from fucking around on their wives. But the women, they fuck around too. Maybe they have more options what with their preserved vaginas? Maybe it's all just really fucking hard. Maybe this is why dick size is so important, even though it's not, not now anyway. Maybe dying alone is just fine.

Okay, and maybe British men all have really small cocks and that would be the problem here.

"Have you ever fucked a tart who's had a kid?"
"No."
He didn't hear and turned to me mouth ajar. I shook my head." Well I…" He zig-zagged crazily, squeezed between a taxi and a newspaper van, and drifted two-wheeled up queensway.
"Well I fucking have, and it's no joke. Don't know you're there."
…
"Like waving a flag in space.
…
"Their guts flop, too. Jen'll be okay for one, maybe more.
"No fuck."
"I said she could adopt some, but tarts like having babies.
"Their cunts…" He flicked off the heater. "Turn to mush."
"Tits"
We pulled away
"Smell of bad milk. And they hang. Pancake tits."
Really?
"Yur."
"Jungle tits. But I thought, Fuck it. Jen's all right. Firm. And I don't fuck her that much now."

Ring Of Fire [Elle]
The Rachel Papers [Amazon]

See, Stuart Miller made all his employees sign up for that Landmark Forum thing.
The Landmark Forum was the invention of a used-car salesman named Jack Rosenberg who changed his name to Werner Erhard after reading a story on some prominent German dudes in Esquire and got all sorts of self-absorbed seventies philosophical narcissists to sign up for his classes before fleeing to the Caymans in the wake of a 60 Minutes expose, after which he left the Landmark "brand" to his older brother for a rumored $1 but an actual multimillion dollar sum. The Forum all but locks people in rooms and uses a time-honored cult regimen of weird jargon, relentless repetition and food deprivation to get them to spill their innermost secrets/fears/insecurities and and shake off their "victim mentalities" but paradoxically convinces everyone who calls it a cult that the Forum is a huge misunderstood victim of societal prejudice and hate.

46. Accounts of EST seminars describe seemingly religious experiences. For example, a former participant described portions of the course as "filled with moans, sobs, whimpers, and cries…an earsplitting scream…writhing and flailing in the air." Plaintiff Glasgow witnessed very similar reactions when he was forced to attend Landmark sessions.

53. When Plaintiff Glasgow expressed this uneasiness, Defendant Miller's only response was that Landmark is "very much the language of the company"

And bondage was the "bondage" of the company!

and that "all of the company's executives, owners, and board members have benefited from taking multiple landmark seminars."

Upon accepting the promotion to the position of Director of Marketing, he even asked Defendant Miller if he could discontinue the Landmark sessions.At such time, Defendant Miller told him specifically that the Landmark seminars were mandatory for company executives and was all part of being a "team player."

But back to the sex. Basically, Scott Glasgow agreed to sleep in Stuart Miller's bed on business trips if he didn't try anything, but then woke up in the middle of the night to find him caressing his head, which was weird, and he moved to the couch. Then Stuart made him dress in drag for a video presentation that subsequently got aired to clients and held an employee retreat where he showed him his ass during a "team building" exercise. There was a bunch of other creepy stuff and finally Glasgow asked to get his own bed on business trips and Miller accused him of being an "anger addict" and told him that he "and everyone else in the company were afraid to work with him." The lawsuit, for your pleasure, is here (click on any image to enlarge):

So what can we learn from this, besides that growing up gay in a family of Fundamentalist Christians fucks you up? I think that American business, from American Apparel and Abercrombie & Fitch to the massive hedge fund that trader sued for allegations that his boss forced him to take estrogen, is dominated by hucksters and frauds who are very good at selling things that, as Vanessa Grigoriadis said of the Forum itself, essentially "come down to the Nike slogan — 'Just Do It,'" or in the words of one Forum teacher, "LIFE IS EMPTY AND MEANINGLESS, AND IT'S EMPTY AND MEANINGLESS THAT IT'S EMPTY AND MEANINGLESS," which is to say, if you repeat something stupid enough times you can probably make a lot of money selling things as mundane as T-shirts and sperm, and your employees, so confused and cash-hungry from years of being barraged with pointless marketing messages, will probably go along with it.

But Glasgow could have made the whole thing up to settle a score with his ex-boyfriend. In which case he is even more awesome.

Suit Against Sperm Bank Firm Claims Sexual Harassment And Cult-Like Behavior [Village Voice]

Stuart Miller — Prayer Warriors — The TRUE Story of a Gay Son, His Fundamentalist Christian Family, and their Battle For His Soul

Related: Pay Money, Be Happy [New York Magazine]

Trader Lawsuit Reveals Secret To $13 Billion Hedge Fund Riches

Of course, that can also be a double-aged sword: "Those with two full-time nannies say that, since each is aware of what the other is doing, there are times when each one feels unfairly burdened with too much work and thinks the other is slacking. "You have to explain, 'You're here looking after the baby and the house, but she bought groceries and went to the post office to send a certified letter for me, and she got the kids to the tailor and playdate,' says Yael. "You wish they could figure it out on their own, but you have to intervene." Perhaps someone should get a team of McKinsey consultants in to optimize these work flows?

In other cases, too many nannies may mean that children don't learn to do things for themselves. "Sometimes nannies do things the child should be doing, like picking up toys," says Stacy Rosenthal, a West Village resident who works in product development.

Or um alternately like the recession could not arrive soon enough.

And lesbians don't need Roe v. Wade! Feminists, we don't "cut men out of our lives." Sure, after a decade or so of interacting with them on a level that might result in abortion we try to inoculate ourselves against the psychic damage of all the disappointment they might inflict. You'd probably pretend to chalk up all that psychic damage to killing our fetuses, but come on, Rush, where do you think the real threat of emotional attachment lies? The embryo? Or the dude you know just can't handle being a dad? Not that you could handle a kid, but ...you've given it a lot more thought than the dude. Do you have any idea how dudes freak out about pregnancy? I'm sure you've done it in your day! It's not pretty. In fact, it gets old, especially the second or third time — so much you try to avoid it at all (or most) costs — thanks Feminism!

And yeah, it wouldn't happen quite this way if not for feminism, except that it sort of did all the time — hence the old "coat hanger" meme! — and you know, sometimes, you just have to get it over with and pledge not to let it happen a second or third time and move on in trust that not every man you meet says he doesn't think abortion is murder solely because he's planning to cheat on you with his intern in the next twenty years. (And it would be really, really messy if he got her pregnant.)

Hence, I can only assume, the feminist (and sometimes even non-fetalbloodthirsting!) support for Barack Obama, who loves killing babies just as much as Hillary, not just because he's a jerk, but because, you know, he shares in our audacious hope that, one day, we can get past this silly paradigm you created in your head when some feminist didn't want to sleep with you because she had "cut men out of her life." Maybe you just sucked at giving head! Which, incidentally, is a good way to prevent unwanted babykilling.

A Lot Of These Feminists And Women...Think They're Owed [Media Matters]
Abort A Baby, Take A Tylenol [National Review] (This is actually interesting, although I didn't reference it, because as usual, I went off on some ADD-addled tangent; what else is new.)
Roberts And Roe [Atlantic]
Abortion Activists Slam Obama Comment [UPI]

Now, surely the Daily Mail can argue that Lisa Marie's pregnancy may have occasioned her to consume an excess of food — indeed, that she was using pregnancy as an excuse to do so — but the truth is that for some time we have been watching a steady erosion in the customary grace period allotted to a female celebrity's figure maintenance to account for her part in the creation of a new human being. And while both Ms. Barberie-Reynolds and Ms. Presley stand to gain financially from the blurring of the lines between the two forms of weight gain — and that is to ignore the myriad other ways female celebrities have managed to line their own pockets, in addition to those of the celebrity-industrial complex, through the conception (or failure to conceive) children — I am beginning to wonder if the whole thing isn't a little, well, degrading to the very culture of human life the media is supposed to be celebrating when we fetishize fertility/eschew the subject of abortion in all consumer magazines and blockbuster movies/pay seven-figure ransoms for baby pictures.

No, seriously, actually, whatever. It's just this week's sign of the apocalypse etc. etc. But you know.

But enough of that; here we have a man, not a closeted gay Bible-thumping Evangelical career fearmonger but a middle-of-the-road retiree clearly realistic enough about the abortion debate not to let it steer his presidential vote away from a pro-choice candidate, exploiting the very weakest opportunity to pass an unconstitutional law because that's just how nuts people get over the abortion debate.

Anyway, I direct your attention to it not because I think it will pass, but because I truly wonder: why don't middle-of-the-road Catholics just go ahead and embrace the abortion pill already?

If you think abortion is wrong — not "murderous" enough to let it eclipse all other policies guiding your political decisions, perhaps, but not a good thing — shouldn't you look at RU-486, sort of like the Plan B "Morning After" pill, as a form of harm reduction? I know lots of Catholics (sigh) who privately do. It is generally only approved for the first seven weeks of pregnancy, before the whole "beating heart" thing, before the ultrasound looks like anything but a mess of cells, before the embryo even technically can claim the designation "fetus." But beyond that, pill abortions, performed at home without anesthesia, suck. They're personal. They hurt. Sometimes like hell. You bleed for a week, or longer. Look it up on the internet: women invariably describe them as "emotional." They are. If you're down for feeling a sense of loss about the whole thing, if you're at all reflective, if you — fuck, if you want to atone, you know, go ahead, it's your call — it's totally the way to go. And most importantly, once you've had one, you don't really want to do it again. (Not that you ever do, really.) I'm not saying anyone should feel this way about the choice to have an abortion. But a lot of us do. So why should we be treated like we're trying to score hallucinogens?

Missouri House Adds Abortion To Restrictive List [Kansas City Star]

She finds out her removed breasts had a soon-to-be malignant tumor! She's shocked. And she's still got to worry about ovarian cancer. She can only safely have a baby until she is 40. She's 37. She just broke up with someone! She decides to "have a baby on my own and worry about love later." (This is before that Lori Gottlieb essay made it clear that was a bad idea, remember. But now there's something else to worry about. Should she use this new test whereby she can make sure her embryo lacks the BRCA mutation? "Who wouldn't want to spare their child the horrors of the breast cancer gene? On the other hand, if PGD had existed in 1969, I would have been tossed in the trash," she writes. (Hey, Jessica, ever had a friend who was the result of an unplanned pregnancy? Don't use that logic next time you take her to the abortion clinic, mmkay?)

So she rules out the special BRCA testing. Now to find a sperm donor. She finds the perfect one. "half Hungarian, half East Indian, tall, athletic, a grad student with a spotless medical history."

His sperm was all sold out!

So more drama. She found another "stellar candidate" and "took him off the market immediately."

And then she got pregnant. She didn't know she was pregnant. "Are your nipples sore?" a friend asks.

"My nipples have no feeling," she says. "They're skin grafts." Oh right. Anyway, so the point is...having a baby is the most challenging thing you will ever do in your entire life and as a result you should turn the page and not feel guilty flipping through page after page of hair care stories because you had better figure out some way of attracting a man RIGHT THE FUCK NOW OR ELSE CUT OFF YOUR TITS AND DO IT BY YOURSELF? Yeah, I'm assuming that's the message.

Working for a man is probably the only thing less fun than working for The Man. Both are probably going to end badly. But look: You're still trying, penning inflammatory columns to try and ramp up the Google Analytics score so you can get back into the career columnist game that just months ago left you abandoned and alone. Glad to see you've still got all that audacious hope! But here's the reality: look around. How many people do you really expect to die fully satisfied with their lives? One? Three? Now, what about the ones who are freezing their eggs. Do they probably have the worst odds of all of them? Yeah, like we discussed last week, a recession is coming. Everyone just needs to lower their standards. Life is pain! XOM

Want To Have A Baby? Now's The Time [Boston Globe]
Earlier: Want A Better Job? Stop Working Right Now And Get Your Nails Did

Meanwhile, the vast preponderance of abortions are conducted in the first half of the first trimester of pregnancy, increasingly by women who forego any sort of anesthesia so as to carry about their abortions at home with the help of some pills. And, guess what, it hurts!

Soooo, recently I found myself researching the pain involved in pill abortions, namely because a friend of mine had told me that most purveyors of the pills don't prescribe the FDA-recommended regimen of 600 mgs of RU-486 followed by an optional few hundred mgs of something called misoprostol a few days later, because they had found a new regimen — of 200 mgs of RU-486 plus 600 mgs misoprostol all at once — that was "more effective." This friend had also found the new regimen to be really really painful. But when I started researching the differences between the two pharmaceutical cocktails, I found a lot of evidence that the new regimen was a lot cheaper, and numerous studies claiming it was just as effective, but nothing about the pain.

Jesus Shit! I thought. There are motherfucking studies about the responses of women on birth control to porn, there are studies on the impact of videogames on navigational skills, there are probably studies on the prenatal effects of playing video games during the third trimester, and there are no studies about abortion and pain? Is it too late to sign up for that whole "woman president" thing?

The First Ache [NY Times]
Little Children [NY Times]

Worrisome! But luckily, despite our unremitting student-loan statements, our eggs are loooong past their sell-by date. (A fact not helped any with all the booze, nicotine and nose-candy we've consumed over the past decade or two. And speaking of nicotine and blow, doesn't that above illustration of a lab vial totally look like a cigarette or a bloody, coke-filled plastic straw? Just saying! ). Luckily, we say, because just reading about the procedure made our uterus cramp up.

The process of egg extraction is time consuming, and it is not comfortable. For some women, it can be painful. A woman first has to take medications to stop her menstrual cycle and then daily hormone injections for several weeks to stimulate her ovaries to produce a crop of mature eggs at once.

The drugs may cause bloating, weight gain, moodiness and irritability, and there is a risk of a rare condition called ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome that can cause life-threatening complications, blood clots and kidney failure.

The egg extraction itself is a surgical procedure in which a thin needle is inserted through the vagina into the ovary to retrieve the eggs and liquid from the follicles. Risks include adverse responses to anesthesia, infection, bleeding or the inadvertent puncture of an organ.

So basically, rich couples are paying young, cash-poor women a measly $4,000+ to endure what essentially sounds like a drawn-out fusion of PMS, progesterone overdose and 1st-trimester abortion. Hey mom! Look how far we've come!

As Demand For Donor Eggs Soars, HIgh Prices Stir Ethical Concerns [NYTimes]

• Salma Hayek is not only engaged to but expecting a baby with Francois-Henri Pinault, who oversees the company that owns auction-house Christie's as well as design labels like YSL, Stella McCartney and Gucci. [E!Online]

• More billionaire babies! Linda Evangelista may be pregnant with boyfriend Peter Morton's child. [NYPost]

• It's looking likelier and likelier that Gisele Bundchen will be giving birth to the second of Tom Brady's children this fall. It'll be an interesting Christmas in Brady-land! [NY Daily News, 6th item]

• In other baby news: No one at Girlie Gawker is knocked up. Hormonal, yes, but not knocked up.