The XX Factor: What women really think.

Fertile and Fifteen

Back at Jessica and Bonnie: To me the saddest part of that NYT slideshow interview with Elizabeth Cousins, the 16-year-old mother in Brooklyn, was the moment when she explained that she'd thought about abortion, but reconsidered because "people" told her that this might be her only chance to be a mother. It's one thing to decide against abortion because you have a deep moral repugnance for the practice. But how awful to bear a child at 15 (her daughter is 19 months old now) because your ignorant teenage friends tell you something that patently wrong. Assuming she has regular cycles and normal fertility, Elizabeth will have at least 300 more chances to get pregnant in her lifetime. There are plenty of things she will need to worry about in life, but having a baby as infertility insurance at age 15 creates a hell of a lot more problems than it solves.