To think France's plan to write to every 29 year old reminding them to breed is patronising nonsense??

Apparently France or the world isn't overpopulated enough then...

Ha, ha, brilliant comment @ladsladzladse.😆

Is Macron going to send himself an overdue notice?

You could say any medical campaign is patronising

They are largely ignored by most but they will reach a few people who either didn't know the information, were ignoring the information until it was in front of them or had misconceptions about the information

Jeez, that would be a fun letter to receive as an infertile woman.

It’s truly bizarre, although the article does explain that “The measure is part of a 16-point plan designed to increase the country’s dwindling birth rate, notably by countering infertility, which affects one in eight couples, according to officials.”

12.5% of couples (who are trying to conceive) being affected by infertility surprises me tbh. I’d assume it was less.

No medical certificate since 2008. Never ever ever was there a gynaecological exam. A rhesus test that could be done by a gynaecologist or a midwife yes, but thats not a gynaecological exam.

I really don't understand such hypothetical comments.
The people who work on those campaigns know that statistically, it's very improbable that EVERYONE is going to pop 3 kids in the next 24 months. There's this thing called maths, data and statistics that is heavily used to create policies.

If everyone was disabled the benefit system would collapse. True. But it won't happen.

You can call BS all you like. Perhaps it varies by region, but I read the requirements myself (we had been to the town hall to enquire and the gave us all the written details of what was required) then checked with ex because I couldn’t believe it either.
Edited to add, this was around 2007/2008.

I agree, I had a medical exam to validate my French visa and it was literally blood pressure listening to heart and lungs, and that’s it.

Actually apparently the number of people who genuinely don't want children hasn't changed much. What has changed is the number of unintentionally childless, mainly due to multiple different reasons.
Cost it takes longer now to become financially independent, not being able to find a suitable partner, women choosing to delay having children due to building a career and yes it does get harder to get pregnant as you get older so some may have wanted children but end up childless due to not being able to. It's way more complicated then just people saying they don't want to. Just like most other social issues there are often complex reasons.

Im sure they are? And what’s the alternative? Some chance is better than zero chance.

I call BS. No one is forced to have a gynaecological examination to get married. All my friends are married and not one, not a single one had to do a medical exam

Many cancer patients would love to be able to preserve eggs for free.

When I worked in Paris in the late 1980s, there was a government campaign to boost the birth rate. There were posters with photos of babies and also a regular short tv programme late every evening called "Super Sexy". It was basically soft porn (rather "Benny Hill" in style, iirc), designed to encourage people to breed. I can't imagine that it was effective.

I'm interested to know if the French healthcare and education systems could cope if everyone read the letter and then had unprotected sex every day consecutively until they were pregnant or had got someone else pregnant (although obviously the powers that be wouldn't be expecting that level of response).

This doesn’t surprise me. When I almost married my French ex, I recall being horrified at the ‘dossier’ we had to prepare beforehand at the behest of the town hall, which was to include a full gynaecological examination. The fact I was already ‘proven’ (in that we’d already bred) didn’t seem to make one iota of difference.

Thankfully we never compiled the ‘dossier’ and never got married.

Well a lot of people suffer from infertility so surely they want to have kids otherwise they wouldn't even know they were infertile, right?

For years, egg retrieval process + freeze was free only under the condition that a woman would donate her eggs (in France egg donations are not paid so its not easy to attract donors).
In recent years that has changed, now a woman can keep all her eggs without donating some, all paid by the health services.