Let's stop glamorising pregnancy out of wedlock

Pregnant and unmarried

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm getting tired of the endless parade of celebrities getting pregnant out of wedlock. Beauty Addict has run a series of posts showing magazine covers of pregnant celebrities:

• Jessica Alba (unmarried)
• Lily Allen (unmarried)
• Halle Berry (unmarried)
• Jennifer Lopez (married!)
  

No, I am not suggesting that we go back to the days when Ingrid Bergmann left the U.S. because of the relentlessly hostile press she had for conceiving out of wedlock. Media has simply gone too far on the other side of the pendulum, and it's time to go back to the center. One can't escape these magazines - these magazines are point of purchase items when one checks out at the cashier.

What sort of example is this giving to young women that pregnancy out of wedlock is desirable? OK, I take marriage seriously - I've held to my heart what my father-in-law wrote to me prior to my marriage - that marriage is a sacrament, not merely a contract.

I received negative replies when I posted my opinions on Beauty Addict. Kristen herself said my comments about Halle Berry were "insensitive." I know Halle Berry's story: her family abandoned by her father and two wrenching divorces (the first from baseball star David Justice, the second from singer Eric Benet). No wonder that she's bummed on marriage. Still, this is not reason to emblazon her picture on magazine covers such as InStyle and People (does her publicist have an "in" with Time Warner, which owns both magazines?). Is Halle Berry seeking validation from the magazines's audiences for her choices?

Let's set the record straight!

The April 23, 2007 issue of People has a cover story about Marcia Cross and her two infant girls - "The Desparate Housewives star opens up about fertility, her difficult pregnancy, and her 'yummy' baby girls."

While Cross admitted to undergoing in-vitro fertilization (IVF), it was treated very casually: all that was said about her IVF was "Let's stay put and if we can't give this baby a chance."

Here are facts about IVF that women should know:

Five years ago, IVF cost $10,000 to $15,000 per cycle - I do not know the cost today. Certainly, money is no object for Cross as an actress on a top-rated TV show. For the ordinary woman, meeting these expenses would means taking out loans or taking out a second mortgage on their home. Nothing was said about - not even in the sidebar - about the time that processes such as egg harvesting requires. For the working woman, it might require that she take leave from her job or even force her to quit her job.

Cross is lucky that she conceived on her first try. If I remember correctly, Brooke Shields underwent 5 cycles before she conceived her first daughter. Other women go bankrupt in repeated tries to realize their dream of having a baby.

Fertility clinics are required by law to report pregnancy success rates to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); to find reports for the years 1995-2004, visit Assisted Reproductive Technology from the CDC.

In fairness to People, the article did mention that Cross suffered from pre-eclampsia, or pregnancy-induced hypertension, a condition that afflicts many women, especially those who are pregnant past 40. Articles about celebrities (not only Cross, but also Jane Seymour and Geena Davis) having children at advanced ages betray women into thinking that they can postpone having children to well into their 40s.