Happy Conception Day!

"Inspired by the most logical race in the galaxy, the Vulcans, breeding will be permitted once every seven years. For many of you this will mean much less breeding, for me, much much more." Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, episode [AABF18] They Saved Lisa's Brain

A region in Russia is holding a day of conception for the third year in a row in order to reverse Russia's population decline.

Ulyanovsk Gov. Sergei Morozov has decreed Sept. 12 a Day of Conception and is giving couples time off from work to procreate. Couples who give birth nine months later on Russia's national day - June 12 - will receive money, cars, refrigerators and other prizes.

More than 500 women signed up for the contest in 2006 - resulting nine months later in 78 babies, or more than triple the region's daily average. So far this year, the region's birth rate is up 4.5 percent compared to the same period last year.

In Ulyanovsk, everyone who has a baby in a local hospital on June 12 gets some kind of prize. The winners of the grand prize - a locally made SUV called a UAZ-Patriot - are couples judged by a committee on criteria such as "respectability" and "commendable parenting."

The Russian government provides subsidies to women who have more than one child at any time of year, so this isn't really much of an attack on family planning (which Russia doesn't seem to care about anyway, since contraception is scarce and they have one of the highest abortion rates in the world). The complete lack of knowledge about pregnancy is what's offensive. Women don't get pregnant the same day they have sex. That takes about a couple of weeks. Furthermore, how many women actually give birth 9 months to the day after becoming pregnant? Probably not that many.

It just makes me want to scream whenever people assume that women are simple.