{"id":6991,"date":"2006-06-20T11:31:18","date_gmt":"2006-06-20T11:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/ah-yesthis-makes-sense.html"},"modified":"2006-06-20T11:31:18","modified_gmt":"2006-06-20T11:31:18","slug":"ah-yesthis-makes-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/ah-yesthis-makes-sense.html","title":{"rendered":"Ah, yes&#8230;this makes sense."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Reader Andrea sends this. I&#8217;m just going to quote her letter because she puts it perfectly:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Let me see if I have this straight. First we promote &quot;choice&quot; and the number of babies being born drops. Now the European population is aging &#8212; no babies has a way of doing that &#8212; and someone figures out that there won&#8217;t be enough workers to support the older population. <\/p>\n<p>The answer, of course, is easy: more IVF so there will be more babies. <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/health\/5098324.stm\">IVF could ease &quot;population woes&quot; &#8211; <\/a><\/p>\n<p>&quot;It is important to plan ahead and address the social and economic consequences of the declining birth rate and with more couples leaving it until later to start their family, more will experience fertility problems.&quot; &quot;These couples are in a position to make a difference and we need to provide more funding for ART to help them overcome the problems they may encounter.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/go.reuters.co.uk\/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&amp;storyID=1268579&amp;sectionfiltered=news&amp;src=rss\/uk\/topNews\">Benefits of fertility treatment outweigh costs <\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>The benefits of providing free fertility treatments to couples could far outweigh the costs to the government , according to new research reported on Tuesday. Professor William Ledger, a fertility expert at the University of Sheffield, looked at the average cost of producing a baby through in-vitro fertilisation and the benefit to the government over the person&#8217;s lifetime. He and a group of mathematicians and economists used a modelling exercise and calculated that for the average 13,000 pounds it costs to produce a child through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) the government would recoup 143,000 pounds in taxes alone. &quot;Helping people with infertility have children is not just a benefit to themselves and their families but also to society,&quot; he told a news conference. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Let&#8217;s not forget the fact that these will, science assures us, be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/frontpage\/story\/0,,1800745,00.html\">perfect babies, too.<\/a><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sun-sentinel.com\/news\/local\/southflorida\/sfl-614babysex,0,6133219.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines\">And if the European countries won&#8217;t cooperate, let them come to us.<\/a><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Last link, courtesy of <a href=\"http:\/\/richleonardi.blogspot.com\/\">Rich Leonardi<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reader Andrea sends this. I&#8217;m just going to quote her letter because she puts it perfectly: Let me see if I have this straight. First we promote &quot;choice&quot; and the number of babies being born drops. Now the European population is aging &#8212; no babies has a way of doing that &#8212; and someone figures&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ah, yes...this makes sense. - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/ah-yesthis-makes-sense.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ah, yes...this makes sense. - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Reader Andrea sends this. I&#8217;m just going to quote her letter because she puts it perfectly: Let me see if I have this straight. First we promote &quot;choice&quot; and the number of babies being born drops. Now the European population is aging &#8212; no babies has a way of doing that &#8212; and someone figures&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/ah-yesthis-makes-sense.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-06-20T11:31:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Ah, yes...this makes sense. - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/ah-yesthis-makes-sense.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Ah, yes...this makes sense. - Via Media","og_description":"Reader Andrea sends this. I&#8217;m just going to quote her letter because she puts it perfectly: Let me see if I have this straight. First we promote &quot;choice&quot; and the number of babies being born drops. Now the European population is aging &#8212; no babies has a way of doing that &#8212; and someone figures&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/ah-yesthis-makes-sense.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-06-20T11:31:18+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/ah-yesthis-makes-sense.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/ah-yesthis-makes-sense.html","name":"Ah, yes...this makes sense. - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-06-20T11:31:18+00:00","dateModified":"2006-06-20T11:31:18+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/ah-yesthis-makes-sense.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/ah-yesthis-makes-sense.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/ah-yesthis-makes-sense.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Ah, yes&#8230;this makes sense."}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}