By babies will they vanquish the West from Planck's Constant

In Yemen, only 23 per cent of women
have access to contraception.
Photo Credit: Viceland

Here's an interesting report on a Yemeni hospital maternity unit:

VICE Magazine, Born in Yemen
Yemini [sic] women are very fertile. They can expect on average 7.9 children compared to an average of 2.7 in the rest of the world.

The problem is that no Yemeni woman can get a proper gynecological exam. This woman for instance, is having her vagina examined through her eye sockets since Muslim doctors are not allowed to look at private parts of women. OK - I'm joking - being examined through eye slits for vaginal problems doesn't seem like a very promising medical technique. However, I'm not joking when I say Muslim doctors are not allowed to look at private parts of women.

Can there be a more primitive and barbaric religion that does not allow doctors to perform modern medical examinations?

There is no minimum marriage age in the Yemen, and marriages are consummated when the bride is as young as nine years old. Before the young girl reaches the age of nine a man may engage in all kinds of nasties to the young girl as long as there is no penetration, for example, sexual acts such as foreplay, rubbing, kissing and sodomy are allowed. So when you read other bloggers calling Mohammed a paedophile you now know where this comes from.

1400 years ago, there might have been some demographic imperative demanding that young women birth early and often. But Christianity and Judaism long ago abandoned those parts of the Bible and Torah that we consider barbaric today. It is time Islam did likewise. It is not Islamic fundamentalists that pose the greatest danger to modern civilization, but moderate Muslims like those in Yemen who treat their women as cattle and fill the world with more Muslims than they can adequately care for, feed, or educate. It is the world's fastest growing religion and I say that with the same trepidation as I would mentioning a spreading disease.

Children in Djibla
Photo: Marta Leonor Vidal.

These Yemenite children, who fill the streets of Yemen's cities, are headed nowhere, much like their donkey.

Some details:

Fairfield University,
Yemen's Economy
Yemen is one of the least developed countries in the world. It has a per capita GDP of US $460. 42% of the people live in poverty and one in five is malnourished. Some of the major problems that Yemen faces are a limited access to basic services, a high fertility rate (6.7%), high illiteracy rate, especially among women (73.5%), high unemployment (40%), significant inequality, and a diminishing non-renewable water supply.

Yemen Observer,
Yemen’s fertility rate remains one of the highest
At any given moment, nearly 16 percent of women in Yemen are pregnant, according to the latest survey of health matters by the Ministry of Health. This is a very high number of pregnant women, particularly as the government has been trying to encourage people to carefully plan their families and space out births, so as not to risk the health of mothers and children. The strain of continuous pregnancy and birth can have a ruinous effect on women’s health, particularly if they begin having children at a young age. According to Yemen’s most recent Demographic, Maternal and Child Health Survey, 48 percent of women between the ages of 20 and 24 were married before the age of 18. Fourteen percent, meanwhile, were married before the age of 15.