IT'S LATER THAN YOU THINK, GIRLS

Rachel Johnson says that the alarming rise in

breast cancer means that women should be urged to have their children earlier

IT takes a doctor to say the unsayable. We learnt this week that the commonest cancer in Britain was not lung but breast cancer. Some brave chap from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund dared to explain why. The chief cause of the rise in breast cancer cases — there are about 39,500 new cases of breast cancer compared with 31.400 in 1989 are 'lifestyle changes', he said. Women are fatter. They are living longer. And they are having their first babies later (at about 29) and their last babies (remember the iconic autumn pregnancies of Cherie Blair/Patricia Hodge/Madonna) at an age when women in the Third World are grandmothers several times over,

'It's never a good time to have a baby!' is the pabulum fed to every career girl who discovers she's pregnant. But this good doctor has reminded us of one very basic fact: there is a good time to have a baby. It's from the onset of a female's menarche to her mid-thirties. It's just not considered very tactful, fashionable or correct to say so — yet.

This time last year I went to my Belgian gynaecologist for my yearly MOT. I got it into my head that I wanted a test for something or other. So, having got other business out of the way, I asked whether he would run this minor check. Dr Leclerc stopped scratching notes on his pad with his fat Mont Blanc pen, and looked at me, kindly, over the rim of his pince-nez.

Dr Leclerc: `Ah, oui? How old are you, Madame?'

Me: 'Thirty-five.'

Dr Leclerc: 'And how many children. remind me?'

Me: 'Three.'

Dr Leclerc: 'But what will we do. Madame, if we find out you do have such a problem, which, after all, causes not pain but infertility? After the age of 35, vans voyez, your chances of getting pregnant anyway are much, much diminished.'

With these words, he described a steep decline with his hand. 'In fact, Madame,' he confided, 'most women are not aware of this. After the age of 35 females do not ovulate at every cycle.' Basically, Dr Leclerc was suggesting, in his best Gallic bedside manner, that having such a test at

my age was about as pointless as asking a C-reg Rohin Reliant to attempt the landspeed record.

I now know why the consultant scrawled 'elderly primigravida' on my notes when I presented, aged 26, and pregnant. It really does appear that, unless you are one of the many thousands who resort to clinics for assisted reproductive technology (ART), the childbearing window for your average British professional female opens at 29 (career in hand; husband in the bag) and quietly starts shutting at 35.

As Dr Sam Abdullah, the director of the Lister Fertility Clinic, explains, 'Assuming you and your partner are entirely normal, your chances of having a baby are much greater if you're 32 rather than 38. You see, women have only so many eggs, and only about 400 will be viable. As the best eggs are released first, the chances of a healthy pregnancy are critically determined by the quality and age of her egg. Which means that if a woman of 45 receives an egg from a 33-year-old, she has the 33-year-old's chance of a successful conception.' (Don't despair, though: I also learnt about 'the last fling of the ovary'. Just before she hits 40, a woman's ovaries start chucking out their last good eggs like cluster bombs in the hope that one will hit its target.)

All this is, I know, a double-whammy for the Bridget Jones generation. Not only are we risking infertility if we delay childbirth; we are risking breast cancer too. Damn! This latest piece of research can only widen the smirks of the smug-marrieds who chant Tick-tock! tick-tockr at their single friends, or demand to know why thirtyor forty-something women (who may be aching to have children) aren't yet `sprogged up'.

There's been a huge reaction to the breast cancer story. It fits only too nicely with the Daily Mail agenda: that being a housewife and mother is the best a woman can get. But there has been, to date, a conspiracy of silence about the rapid onset of female infertility in the mid-thirties. Now, though, that the two are linked to later childbirth, I think it's safe to make a prediction.

It will be OK. I predict, to raise the subject in schools — even to teach, say, 'fertility issues' alongside sex education and careers advice. Indeed. Child, the National Infertility Support Network, is preparing an information pack for use in secondary schools.

'With the intense concentration on careers and contraception, there is an almost total lack of awareness about infertility in early middle-age,' Claire Brown from Child explains. 'We find that the focus placed so heavily on avoiding pregnancy gives girls the impression that you can get pregnant at the drop of a hat. People need to be aware that one in six couples are affected and seek some sort of treatment, and if they present to their GP most doctors automatically send them away to "try for a year", by which time they may be ineligible for treatment on the NHS.'

If I were Chancellor of the Exchequer, I would be worried. Indeed, I'd be hauling in Estelle Morris, the Education Secretary, for an urgent chat about 'raising the awareness of the health implications of late pregnancy' among students. These breast cancer figures are scary. The older you are (and the proportion of over-50s doubled in the last century), the higher the risk of contracting the disease . . . and the greater the drain on the public purse. Added to this is the fact that the pressure to receive ART on the NHS is growing all the time, as educated couples are making a strong case for arguing that infertility is a `clinical need', and therefore eligible for NHS funding.

So be prepared, all you nubile women of childbearing age out there. For decades now, we have all accepted the perversion of nature that allowed a female, for the first decade of her maturity, to prevent pregnancy by all means available — and for the next decade, to throw away her pills, bulkbuy ovulatory kits and speed-dial Lord Winston.

Yet nature calls. Let's wear our pink ribbons with pride. But don't let's wait till the last fling of the ovaries to get sprogged up.