"... through social-media advertising aimed at under-40 women, promotional vans offering free fertility tests to passersby on the street, and wine-and-cheese informational nights held at clinics and egg-freezing studios across the country. But when it comes to women in larger bodies, some clinics draw the line, turning away patients over a certain body mass index, or BMI. Although there is no national data kept on this phenomenon, an estimated 11.7 percent of American women are considered severely obese, with a body mass index of 40 or higher.... 'This has been a real blow to their body confidence, to how they feel in their body... because they feel that this option — this thing that should be available to everybody — has been taken away from them.'"
From "Egg Freezing’s BMI Problem/For some patients of size, the promise of future family planning is a broken one" (The Cut).
Posts
31 comments:
can't they just self identify as a person with a BMI of 30?
Althouse is drawing the line.
May I gently suggest that any woman with a body mass index over 40 isn't having anything taken from her.
“ this thing that should be available to everybody”.
There are very few things that are available to everybody…..
My completely uninformed expectation is that severely overweight women would be well-adapted to carrying a child as the change in weight, weight distribution, and metabolic activity would hardly be noticeable.
"There is little, if any, research evidence on egg freezing and weight."
Well then, I guess my opinion is as good as anybody's.
"11.7 percent of American women are considered severely obese"
Pffft...focus on the word 'severely. The statistic that matters is obese generally, and that number is way north of 11.7%, so of course the extreme of that bell curve is the focus to hide the overall number.
SSRIs also have weight gain side effects, which makes perfect sense statistically when you realize how many women under 40 are on them.
"Patients of size"
Another new locution, to join "persons of color" in our woke-approved language. Great. I do admit, it sounds nicer than "fat ladies."
Doctors being medically cautious about their cases is admirable, as well as being self-serving. Maybe the endocrinologists and the sex-change surgeons could get a clue about medical caution, although I would guess the money is just too tempting.
Egg Freezing’s BMI Problem
Huh I thought it was the obese women's' BMI problem?
The woman as womb bank. The man as sperm donor. Social progress: one step forward, two steps backward.
Losing weight should be an option since obesity is probably a big factor in black perinatal morbidity. I guess we are into "fat is beautiful" now.
Could they maybe loose weight and then freeze their eggs? Not everything is about self-acceptance. Some things are about health.
When I was last with my family- who range in size from tiny to large- we all noticed doctors hardly put any emphasis on weight at the yearly physical any more. They weigh you (although you can refuse to be weighed), they write the number down, they don't mention it any more. There used to be more emphasis on staying within a certain weight range, but I think they are afraid if they mention weight to their patients, then the patients just won't come back.
It's very interesting to me how quickly we went from "Americans are overweight!" to body positivity! As if the associated health issues just disappeared.
Weirdly written article. Fat patients are in more danger from the procedure than thin ones.
What I really loved, though, was a 269 pound woman trying to make it sound like she was fit. That is some serious delusional thinking.
I had hernia surgery at a place outside Toronto called Shouldice (named of course after a doctor). They have a kind of private sector operation, perhaps unique in Canada. They do only hernia surgeries, they have tried all or most types of repair, but they keep going back to old fashioned, make a deep incision, sew the tear up completely, stitch and staple. It's all about results: patient back on his feet (almost all males) in about a day, virtually no serious complications.
You get a physical long before a date for surgery. They screen out people who are too sick to be sure of doing well--they want to keep advertising their great results. They tell overweight people they have to lose weight.
Fat bottomed girls you make teh rockin’ world go round…
Life is hard. Life is harder when you’re fat.
What do these people expect to happen? Let me guess: the point is to pitch a fit and get noticed.
Women and minorities hardest hit.
If they were taking the fat women’s eggs (and charging the fat women a bunch of money for the privilege), this story would be about how they’re taking advantage of the fat women (preying on their insecurities) giving them false hope that if they just pay these hefty fees, freeze their eggs, they can have babies when they lose all that weight and become the beautiful swan they always thought they were inside (the swan they identified with).
Magic elixir.
I'm going to make a wild guess, the clinics aren't refusing to take money from obese women because they hate them, there is some sort of medical reason.
"This has been a real blow to their body confidence, to how they feel in their body... because they feel that this option — this thing that should be available to everybody — has been taken away from them."
Taken away or sacrificed for gluttony? Heart disease, Type II diabetes, cancer and the like are worse prices to pay for morbid obesity than being denied a frozen egg. Besides, children need a mother that is not in the process of eating herself to death before the child is fully grown.
Not to imply that fat is not beautiful, of course.
She was working as a nanny, and suddenly she meets a rich guy who wants her to be his full time girl friend. Bet his wife was pissed off.
As a reference, a BMI of 40 for a 5'2" woman is 220 pounds. At 5'5" it's 240 pounds.
I'm a guy, and at my height I'd be 280 pounds with a 40 BMI.
I can't even imagine living a normal life at that weight.
A few things. From the article:
The nurse also cited the bed-weight capacity in the clinic’s operating rooms, which Michelle found dubious (standard hospital beds support between 350 and 450 pounds.)
Anyone who has had outpatient surgery (and watched an episode of Scrubs or ER) knows that clinic facilities are not the same as hospital facilities. I've never had in-patient surgery, but in my several out-patient experiences, I've been surprised by how narrow the actual bed used during the surgery is: it's been barely wider than my (not "of size") hips and shoulders. I can see how this limitation, plus the VERY important notes on the difficulties of anesthetizing a "person of size" included in the article, could constitute practical and basically insurmountable (in the clinic setting) barriers to undergoing the procedure for said "persons of size."
Next: our host's pull-quote about this whole thing affecting "their" body positivity or whatever it was - that quote refers to a single person in the article. Which illustrates the irritating ambiguity surrounding the use of the stupid they/them set of pronouns for an individual. The pull-quote appears to be making a universal point, but it's not.
And - the initial example in the article, a woman with a BMI of 42 who eats healthfully and works out 3-5 times a week - hmm. I'm not going to say she's lying, but I am going to say that that isn't the fact pattern for the vast majority of people at that BMI. So the writer hunted around to find that one very overweight person in, what, a thousand or more? who really has some sort of metabolic issue leading to her weight gain despite a truly healthy lifestyle (which - wouldn't that also be a potential risk factor in pregnancy? On the basis of which an IVF clinic could reasonably be expected to reject her, in the same way that a LASIK clinic might reject someone whose astigmatism is too great?). She is not the norm by any stretch.
And finally - it's hard to find an OB these days, I understand, because the malpractice insurance rates in that specialty are astronomical, because lawsuits abound. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that one driver behind not completing the egg-extraction process on "people of size" (sorry to keep repeating it - it's ticking me off because I have a size too) is that practicing OBs won't take them on if they want their embryos implanted.
I feel for the women who want to keep motherhood as an open option, but we all have to live in the real world, even though our real world is in many ways an age of miracles.
Reality is gobsmackingly unfair. Learning that is part of becoming an adult. An acceptance of reality is usually achieved shortly past being a toddler. Are these women also upset that when they stick a fork in an electrical outlet, they get shocked, despite their desire to do so?
First of all, BMI is a poor proxy for physical condition, and no medical decision should be based on it.
Second, unless she is built like an NFL linebacker she is very obese, and it is quite reasonable for doctors/ clinics to reject her over medical concerns.
So basically, what women want to do is spend their youth having fun while also enhancing their economic value, and maybe then have children. Like a lot of men do. But Nature keeps wasting all those eggs, even when they have no desire to get pregnant.
It's amazing how many different ways Nature got it wrong.
"this thing that should be available to everybody — has been taken away from them."
It wasn't taken-away from them. They might also feel as if they have a right to be a paratrooper or firefighter, but some things require a minimum level of strength, agility and endurance.
Even if it was impossible to lose weight (it is merely hard, not impossible), then it just comes down to; life is unfair, get used to it. I would love to beat Nadal in the French Open, but I would have to be 100X better at tennis, so poor me! I don't get to do that.
From the article:
The procedure is done under anesthesia, and after a few hours’ rest, patients can go home (clinics recommend doing so while accompanied by a friend or family member, to be safe).
WTF? I've never heard of someone getting a procedure "under anesthesia" where they're allowed to drive themselves home.
If you sleep, you don't drive afterwards. If they're not following that, I wouldn't trust anything else from the clinic
The vast majority of studies examine BMI and in vitro fertilization, and results from these are mixed. Some have linked overweight and obesity with fewer eggs retrieved and lower rates of pregnancy and live births, while others find no impact of a high BMI on IVF outcomes.
So a meta-analysis would "link overweight and obesity with fewer eggs retrieved and lower rates of pregnancy and live births". Check.
I confess, I gave up at that point
I know 2women(twins) doing AI w/out any men involved, I’ve never known them to be w/anyone(at all).
They are mid 30s, not small, educated and independent.
I’ll let you know how it goes- I pray it goes well, but…
Alcohol consumption of the mixed liquors kind… can add calories which 🟰 bigger bodies.
I’m not impressed, but I wish all the best.
PETER VENKMAN: Dana, are these the eggs?
DANA BARRETT: Yes, see, I was over there, and these eggs just jumped right out of their shells and started to cook on the counter.
PETER VENKMAN: That is weird.
DANA BARRETT: And that's when I to hear that awful noise coming from the refrigerator.
Peter lifted up the lettuce and the cooked eggs.
DANA BARRETT: Dr. Venkman, you've come all this way. Would you like to check the refrigerator?
PETER VENKMAN: I'll check the fridge. Good call.
She sighed. Peter slowly opened the refrigerator a crack.
PETER VENKMAN: Oh, my God.
Dana became worried. Peter opened it wider.
PETER VENKMAN: Look at all the junk food.
I guess the good thing about their foregoing motherhood to enhance their economic prospects is that they can afford this insanely expensive procedure.
They are paying for it, aren't they? Or is it "free"?
Out of curiosity, do you think these are conservative women?
Does it matter?
The 2 I know are not conservative.
Not that it matters.
We don't need more fat kids.
Post a Comment