英国一位顶级助产士日前表示，健康专家应该停止恐吓高龄女性生孩子的风险。
Health experts should stop 'terrifying' older women about the risks of having babies, Britain's top midwife has said.
皇家助产士学院首席执行官凯西·沃里克教授称，专家们夸大了年龄的问题。
Professor Cathy Warwick, the chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives, said experts had overstated the problems attached to age.
近几十年来，随着越来越多的女性首先关注自己的事业，导致高龄产妇的数量飙升。
The number of older mothers has soared in recent decades, as more women concentrate on their career first.
相比47年前，如今女性拥有第一个孩子的平均年龄迟了五年。相比1970年23.5岁，英国和威尔士头胎母亲的平均年龄上升到了28.6岁。
Women now have their first child five years later on average than they did 47 years ago. The average age of first-time motherhood in England and Wales is 28.6, up from 23.5 in 1970.
三十年来，40岁以上的母亲的比例从1984年的千分之四点九上升到了2014年的千分之十四点七。
And the proportion of over-40s mothers has trebled in three decades, from 4.9 per 1,000 in 1984 to 14.7 per 1,000 in 2014.
医生倾向于警告妇女不要太晚生育--强调年龄会让生育率下降，并发症机会增加，先天畸形几率也会上升。
Doctors tend to warn women not to leave it too late – stressing that with age fertility drops, the chance of complications increases, and the chance of birth defects also rises.
但是沃里克教授称，这些风险被夸大了。
But Professor Warwick said the risks were being overplayed.
她向《星期日电讯报》透露：“除非你不健康，否则即便你的身体42岁或者45岁了，风险的增加也相对较小。我不明白为什么我们如此担心年龄问题，我不确定我们是否应该为此恐吓妇女。”
'Even if you have your baby at 42 or 45, it's a relatively small increase in risk to you if you're otherwise healthy,' she told The Sunday Telegraph. 'I'm not sure why we're quite so worried about the age issue and I'm not sure we should be terrifying women about it.'