The pen shells can live for many years, but they take years to reach reproductive age.

笔壳蛤可以存活多年，但是它们需要数年才能达到生育年龄。

They are very common in females of reproductive age, but can affect females of any age.

它们常见于育龄期女性，但各个年龄段均可发病。

All right, as a quick recap… amenorrhea is the abnormal absence of menstruation in females of reproductive age.

好！快速回顾一下：闭经指育龄期女性无月经或月经异常停止。

Our need to care for our cute infants gives them a better chance of surviving to a reproductive age.

我们需要照顾可爱的婴儿，这让他们更有可能活到生育年龄。

But unfortunately, being of reproductive age is, well, anywhere from, like, 12 or 13 to in your early 50s.

但不幸的是，生育年龄是从 12 岁或 13 岁到 50 岁出头的任何地方。

At no previous time had governments across the planet attempted to vaccinate all adults (including all women of reproductive age) at once.

此前，全球各国政府从未尝试一次为所有成年人（包括所有育龄妇女）接种疫苗。

So the reason we stopped studying women of reproductive age in clinical trials is because we didn't want to screw up babies, OK?

所以我们停止在临床试验中研究育龄妇女的原因是因为我们不想搞砸婴儿，好吗？

Though not always in obvious ways, all of these changes improve people's chance of surviving to reproductive age — that's what drives natural selection, the force behind all these evolutionary changes.

虽然不总是以明显的方式，这些变化都提高了人们达到生育年龄前的存活率——这驱动着自然选择，在背后推动所有进化的力量。

So it's actually a shift, then, that happens in advising scientists that are doing biomedical research, don't study women of reproductive age out of a good heart, right?

因此，这实际上是一个转变，建议正在进行生物医学研究的科学家，不要出于好心来研究育龄妇女，对吗？

When women of reproductive age started to be vaccinated in large numbers in the (northern) summer of 2021, some noticed that their periods following vaccination were later than normal.

当育龄妇女在 2021 年（北方）夏季开始大量接种疫苗时，一些人注意到她们接种疫苗后的月经比正常时间晚。

Similarly, our ability to cure childhood cancers, surgically extract inflamed appendixes, and deliver babies whose mothers have life-threatening pregnancy-specific conditions, all tend to stop selection by allowing more people to survive to a reproductive age.

在相同情况下，可以治疗儿童癌症、做阑尾炎手术、在孕妇有生命危险时成功接生，都阻止了自然选择，让更多人活下来，直到健康成长到生育年龄。

It is troubling, therefore, that a pair of studies on American women published since 2021 found that one-quarter of pregnant women—and about half of non-pregnant women of reproductive age—do not meet minimum iodine thresholds.

因此，令人不安的是，自 2021 年以来发表的两项针对美国女性的研究发现，四分之一的孕妇——以及大约一半的育龄非孕妇——没有达到最低碘阈值。

At the moment, to limit the risk of miscarriage and harm to fetuses during a vaccine trial, it is standard practice for women of reproductive age participating in such trials to be using birth control.

目前，为了限制疫苗试验期间流产和伤害胎儿的风险，参与此类试验的育龄妇女使用节育措施是标准做法。