Since at least the 1960s, we have been bombarded with information about overpopulation, and the phrase “unwanted pregnancy” has become part of the everyday discourse about women’s rights. How seldom has it been pointed out that, throughout the ages, there has been just as much yearning, among women, to achieve a pregnancy. Literature and history are full of examples of a desperate quest to have a child – as is the Bible. Sarah, Abraham’s wife and the matriarch of the Hebrew Bible, is greatly advanced in years when she gives birth to Isaac, by the grace of God. So we should, I think, look with compassion upon the older women who will pay any price, make any sacrifice, to conceive a baby, even at a time of life – past their middle 40s – when it becomes increasingly difficult to do so. Many of these women are being scandalously exploited, claims Sally Cheshire, chairwoman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. They are being “sold” the idea, by commercial fertility clinics, that they have a good chance of conceiving a baby at the age of 44, when in truth the success rate may be as low as one per cent. Some women pay up to £20,000 for a cycle of IVF. Since 2004, there has been a boom in older women seeking assisted conception – in 2017, there were 10,835 applications for IVF among women in their 40s. But only two procedures a year result in what they call a “take-home baby”, for women in their 40s. Yet for some, even that one per cent chance of becoming a mother represents an outside hope. Sally Cheshire is surely right to deplore the clinics which do not give honest, factual information, and the commercial interests which “over-sell” conception chances. Health education should teach girls that nature, in general, favours younger motherhood. But we should also understand that this baby hunger has always existed: it’s just that the overweening focus on contraception has hidden from view the equally strong drive for conception.