【Bengali Archives】

A campaign by Italy's health ministry to encourage people to procreate has been inundated by negative comments for its promotional posters -- which were deemed tasteless,Bengali Archives anachronistic and sexist.

The first "Fertility Day," which will be held on Sept. 22, was announced by Italian health minister Beatrice Lorenzin last month in an attempt to inform the public opinion on issues such as the "danger of falling birth rates" and the "beauty of motherhood and fatherhood."

The government also created a website (currently offline) and #FertilityGame (also offline), which are both dedicated to the the initiative. The game, according to Vice, is like a weird Space Invaders game where you use the keyboard arrows to dodge objects such as cigarettes, alcohol and a syringe with an egg or a sperm.

Nuooo, non riesco a giocare al #FertilityGame... #naggia pic.twitter.com/adEu7xkJPb

— Fabio Massi (@FabioMassi) August 31, 2016

#fertilityday #fertilitygame Il #giocodellestate che spiega i rischi per la tua #fertilità https://t.co/aPAxCJbuoc pic.twitter.com/O2Gbn0IEYQ

— fertilityday (@FertilityDay) August 15, 2016

Alongside the website and the game, the government produced official cards and posters with messages encouraging women to have children.

In one poster a woman holds a hourglass while the message reads: "Beauty has no age. Fertility does," hinting at the controversial concept of the biological clock. Another one features a stork on a chimney and the caption: "Hurry! Don't wait for the stork."

Other posters claimed being young parents was "the best way to be creative" and firmly stated that fertility was "a common good."

The campaign started trending on Twitter in recent days, as more and more people criticized it for being sexist and out of touch.

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Translation: More than #fertilityday I get a nice #WTF

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Translation: The #fertilityday is an insult to all the people who cannot have children and who would like to but they don't have a job. And it will ruin my birthday, on [Sept.] 22

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Translation: This #fertilityday does nothing but remind me that my wife lost her job after getting pregnant.

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Some people on social media used the hashtag #fertilityday to compare the campaign to the ones imposed by fascist regimes.

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Roberto Saviano, writer and author of Gomorra, also weighed into the debate, saying in a Facebook post that the health ministry should "do research and make procreation accessible for those couples who are suffering from infertility instead of generally encouraging people to have children."

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Italy has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe. In 2014, its birth rate was just 8 per 1,000 people compared with 12 and 13 in the UK and US respectively, according to the World Bank. Just 488,000 babies were born in Italy in 2015.

Italian women give birth to 1.39 children on average, compared with an EU average of 1.58.

To attempt to combat the decline in the country's birth rate, Lorenzin has doubled the current monthly bonus for lower income families.