Content note: This article contains discussions of pregnancy, pregnancy loss and abortion

A few weeks ago, I turned 29. As birthdays go, it was a fairly standard affair: I drank wine, I ate cake, and I gritted my teeth through my relatives’ annual performance of ‘why hasn’t Kim had kids yet?’ Just a few more weeks and they could have had Dorothy Byrne’s now infamous Sunday Times interview waiting in the wings. ‘Finally!’ they would have said ‘Somebody who isn’t afraid to say the thing that we’ve been saying for years.’

Amidst the furore generated by Byrne’s (now abandoned) ‘fertility seminar’ proposals over the last fortnight, I’ve found myself confronting a more unsettling truth: I agree with her. I do think there’s a problem with the way we talk about fertility. I just don’t think it’s any of the ones Byrne thinks it is.

Like many women, I spent my teenage years being told that pregnancy was a certain outcome of unprotected sex. When I took myself to the doctor at 16, I didn’t need to be on contraception, but that didn’t matter. I knew that sex meant babies and I knew that babies ruined lives.

“I agree with her. I do think there’s a problem with the way we talk about fertility. I just don’t think it’s any of the ones Byrne thinks it is"

Except, when I reached my mid-twenties, it suddenly wasn’t that simple. Almost overnight, the burden of my fertility was replaced with ‘gentle hints’ that I shouldn’t be taking it for granted. I was still quizzed on my contraception at every appointment, but I was also reminded that getting pregnant ‘can be tricky’ and — in a cruel twist of fate — it turns out not having babies ruins lives too.

The more I have this conversation, the more I realise the extent to which our reproductive lives are spent listening to these ‘facts’ about our fertility. The problem, unlike the ’biological truths’ that Byrne claims she wants to be communicated, is that these figures are often exaggerated, frequently out of date, sometimes contradictory and — occasionally — just plain wrong.

We have likely all heard, for example, that it is a fact that female fertility ’falls off a cliff’ at 35. Except it isn’t, and it doesn’t. Prolific though it has become, this figure stems from a single study of parish birth records in pre-revolutionary France. (You know, back when life expectancy itself was about 30.) There was no indication that the women studied were attempting to get pregnant — it’s possible they weren’t even sexually active — yet a tendency for them to not conceive over 35 is still used as graphic ’proof’ of my imminent barrenness.

For the interested, more recent studies have painted a more optimistic picture. The most widely relied-upon found that 82% of women aged 35-39 would become pregnant within a year of trying, compared to 86% of women aged 30-34, and 87% of women aged 27-29. A decline, certainly. One worth talking about, definitely! But I reckon it can wait until after freshers’ week.

“There seems to be a suggestion — whether explicit or otherwise — that encouraging ‘responsible’ reproductive behaviour justifies a few white lies when it comes to the facts of fertility”

But, I know what you’re thinking: a whole year to get pregnant? Isn’t that a long time? Well, yes and no, and we’ve got Tony Blair to thank for the confusion. Since 1999, the government’s Teenage Pregnancy Strategy (now a Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Framework) has put great emphasis on educating young people about the importance of contraception and the risks of unplanned pregnancy. In terms of policy, it’s worked; but the sex education it inspired has left many of us in the dark about the true ‘risk’ of conception.

In reality, even the best-timed sex comes with less than a 30% chance of conceiving, and there are only 8 days of every menstrual cycle in which it is possible to do so in the first place. Add to this the figure that 1 in 4 pregnancies will end in miscarriage, and the sentiment that there exists a binary choice between getting and not getting pregnant appears yet more absurd.

So, why aren’t we talking about this?

There seems to be a suggestion — whether explicit or otherwise — that encouraging ‘responsible’ reproductive behaviour justifies a few white lies when it comes to the facts of fertility. Frankly, I don’t think this holds up. On a purely empirical level, people’s perceptions matter. A recent YouGov poll found that nearly half of men and over a third of women believe 36-40 is ‘too old’ for a woman to become a mother. On the other end of the scale, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service continues to report on increases in abortions in women in their 30s and 40s, ’fertility misconceptions’ being cited as a major reason for unwanted pregnancies in this demographic.

From the ethical side of things, there is also the thorny question of who decides what responsible reproduction looks like and for whom. For all the rhetoric surrounding reproductive rights, the entwined history of birth control and eugenics should remain at the forefront of our minds — as should the knowledge that scandals concerning family planning policy are far from a thing of the past.

Just last year, details emerged of a decade long NHS scheme in which GPs were offered financial incentives to recommend long-acting-reversible-contraceptives to patients. Much like the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, the initiative was declared a statistical success, but a BPAS joint report denounced the coercion at the scheme’s heart — as ever, disproportionately targeting working class and BAME communities. With regards to Byrne’s own comments, the fact her pro-fertility efforts were targeted towards predominantly white, predominantly middle-class Cambridge students did not go unnoticed.

It is possible I’m being uncharitable: if Byrne truly wants to get us talking about the ‘biological truth’ of fertility then I am all for it. However, her reliance on patronising language, sweeping claims and repeated references to ‘girls’ (and girls alone) does not inspire confidence. If we really want to ‘empower’ students through reproductive knowledge, providing all genders with access to unbiased, evidence-based, up-to-date information seems a good place to start. Scaremongering fertility statistics have never been taboo; it’s the facts we have to fight for. If a university can change one thing with regards to the fertility conversation, surely it’s that.