There is so much dosh to be made in them there hills. That was my first thought when I read of a new fertility treatment that is said to delay menopause for up to 20 years. A company called ProFam is offering it to women under 40 – and for those with endometriosis it is a gift. I heard one such woman talking on Radio 4’s Today programme in a four-minute slot that was allotted to the piddling issue of women’s bits.
But hell, why not delay the menopause, ageing, death? Have a baby at 65. Whatevs. For that is the other way this procedure is being discussed. Two things are happening: rising infertility rates (often male, but let’s not go there); and women choosing not to have children. These terrible, dreaded career women who don’t have children.
Women can now “nail a career and feel that burden taken off their shoulders … they can go back to their tissue, which they froze at 30”, says Prof Simon Fishel, ProFam’s founder. Or we could support women in the workplace, make childcare affordable and involve fathers? How about fixing all this cultural and social stuff, instead of fixing women’s bodies with expensive and invasive operations?
And while we are at it – and I am always at it – how about making the menopause something that we talk about and assist women with? Too many of my friends are having a hard time finding sympathetic doctors and are being prescribed antidepressants for menopausal symptoms. They are not depressed, but nor are they easy bunnies, let’s put it that way.
At a party the other night, my mate said she was worried that Brexit would cause a shortage of HRT patches and she was going to stockpile them. She had already called the doctor about it.
This is the first time I actually thought Brexit might be stopped. Hordes of oestrogen-depleted women denied their HRT? It will make the poll tax riots look like tea at the Ritz.
• Suzanne Moore is a Guardian columnist