An apology

Earlier today, a post went up on the blog, following up on a Daily Mail story, which in itself was re-reporting a Nature story on the future of fertility science – including the prediction that women of 100 will be able to get pregnant. In this post, some offensive and ageist language was used, which was derogatory towards older women, and which quite rightly many commenters and some bloggers called her up on. This is a group blog, and we all post freely, without vetting individual posts before they go up – we wouldn’t be able to run this blog if everything was edited before it appeared. Sometimes we all slip up. This is one of those times.

In my own view, the Daily Mail was sensationalising a story for its own ends – using shock & horror predictions to critique women’s control of our own fertility and older mothers in general.

Much as we at The F-Word support Abby, there’s no excuse for this, and, as editor, I simply apologise. I took down the post earlier, but have now put it back up again for transparency – you can read it here, along with the comments. You can also read criticisms of the post here and here.