Aromantic Assassins

Most women want children – but half are unsure if they will. For some, they won’t be bothered if they remain childless:

The researchers used data from the National Survey of Family Growth, a federally funded survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, from 2002 to 2019. This included surveys of a nationally representative group of 41,492 women aged 15 to 44 about a broad range of fertility-related indicators.
Findings showed that there was little change during that time in the proportion of women who said they intended to have children. On average, 62% of women said they intended to have a child and 35% did not intend to, with only a small percentage saying they didn’t know.
But up to 50% of the women who intended to have children said they were only “somewhat sure” or “not at all sure” that they would actually realize their intention to have a child.
....
And it is not just the certainty that may be affecting the fertility rate. The intensity of the desire mattered, too.
The study found that up to 25% of childless women who intended to have children also said they would not be bothered if they ended up not having a child.
“This not being bothered was especially high among younger women, and it increased over time among those who were younger,” Hayford said.
“They are open to different pathways and different kinds of lives. If they don’t become parents for whatever reason, it doesn’t seem that upsetting to many of them.”
One possibility often discussed for the declining birth rate is that young people today are unsure about the future of the country and the world, and that is keeping them from having children.

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Interesting nuanced article: “It Makes It More Real to You”: Abortion Attitudes Following Experience and Contact With Abortion (research done in UK).

(Okay, stating here that yay for the decriminalisation of women taking abortion pills this week but I have been saying for years - in fact I think the reformers were saying this in 67 but it was a trade-off to get medics on side - the 2 doctors provision in the current legislation is a fossil relic from the period when doctors reckoned that 'unlawful' in the relevant clause of the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act predicated 'lawful' and that meant docs with sound clinical reasons, but even so they made very very sure to get a second opinion. And this hardened into the situation after the Bourne judgement of 1938 where the doc who would operate would refer to a psychiatrist to get the 'threat to mental health' box ticked.)

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Yes, I think this is creepy, though I also think there are other (more reliable than cycle-tracking) methods of contraception besides the Pill: TikTok is obsessed with the hormone-free birth control debate: why is everyone telling you to stop the pill?

While on the one hand yes, contraception should be part of general routine healthcare and the sort of thing that GPs provide. But on the other, back in the day, specialist clinics were prepared to work with women to discover what was best for them, and I'm not sure GPs have either the time or the training to do this. At a panel I was on some years ago people were claiming that there was one Pill formulation that was the go-to and it so did not suit every woman.

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This is more in the realm of general demographic information, and I am sure my dearios are already aware of this: There Were Still Old People When Life Expectancy Was 35. (And the menopause is not some new-fangled unnatural thing, siiiiigh.)

I think I mentioned (did I?) that my research position at Former Workplace was terminated some while ago due to Internal Upheavals.

Well, thinks I, I still have research connection with Esteemed Academic Institution where I did my PhD and professional qualification, providing me with a) access to a research library and b) an institutional email address.

This connection was renewed some 5 years ago and comes up for renewal in the autumn, and being a forethoughtful hedjog I thought I would start mentioning this to person I know best in the department with which I am associated.

And, dammit, they have gone and changed the rules.

Some years ago (in fact before my last renewal but I guess institutional processes move slowly) there was a massive hoohah when somebody who also had some honorary connection with Esteemed Academic Institution turned out to be using it to bring EAI into disrepute by making it seem as though it had given official imprimatur to rather dodgy intellectual activities they were up to. Plus, there was a certain degree of mystery, or at least, lack of institutional memory, as to how person had even obtained this honorary position in the first place. (Or at least, nobody was copping to knowing.)

So, they are tightening up the rules so that you have to have much more of a formal position - e.g. be doing a collaborative project with somebody in the department - to be assigned honorary research status. So alas, am no longer eligible.

*Mutters obscenities*

Am wondering whether I can find friends in other institutions who might provide some similar position according me library access....

Honestly, people. How is this even A Thing?

NHS staff unsettled by patients filming care and posting videos on social media.

When partner first mentioned this to me I was 'Do they even let them into operating theatre and what about scrubbing up etc?', because I assumed it wasn't actually the patient doing this, and in fact reading further it does seem to be accompanying persons.

Radiographers, who take X-rays and scans, fear the trend could compromise the privacy of other patients being treated nearby and lead to staff having their work discussed online.
The Society of Radiographers (SoR) has gone public with its unease after a spate of incidents in which patients, or someone with them in the hospital, began filming their care.
On one occasion a radiology department assistant from the south coast was inserting a cannula into a patient who had cancer when their 19-year-old daughter began filming.
“She wanted to record the cannulation because she thought it would be entertaining on social media.* But she didn’t ask permission,” the staff member said.
“I spent the weekend afterwards worrying: did I do my job properly? I know I did, but no one’s perfect all the time and this was recorded. I don’t think I slept for the whole weekend.”
They were also concerned that a patient in the next bay was giving consent for a colonoscopy – an invasive diagnostic test – at the same time as the daughter was filming her mother close by. “That could all have been recorded on the film, including names and dates of birth,” they said.
Ashley d’Aquino, a therapeutic radiographer in London, said a colleague had agreed to take photographs for a patient, “but when the patient handed over her phone the member of staff saw that the patient had also been covertly recording her, to publish on her cancer blog.

First we go back to miasmatic theory, then we go back to operations as spectator sport?

How very different, I would argue, are Barbara Hepworth's 'Hospital Drawings':

Capener began purchasing some of Hepworth’s art, which in turn helped with the costs of her daughter’s surgery. He later asked the artist if she might be interested in observing some of the procedures taking place in the operating theatre. Hepworth, initially horrified by this thought, decided to go. The materials that she needed to make her sculptures were scarce during postwar Britain, meaning she also had more time on her hands to explore other projects.
Hepworth soon became fascinated with the surgical process. She was particularly moved by the methodical rhythm of the surgeon’s hands and the concentration in their eyes. The eyes and hands are rendered with a delicacy and softness, with attentively modulated grey-white tones. They emerge from the cruder, more abstract marks in blue, green and other similar hues. Her drawing techniques somehow brings the scene to life; the many flowing lines are suggestive of the creases forming in the doctors’ blue gowns, created by their constant movement around the horizontal, inert patient. After many visits, Hepworth had created a body of work which revealed her wonderful abilities as a draughtsperson, as well as a sculptor.