“Pet pregnancy prevention pays - Kansas City Star” plus 4 more

Pet pregnancy prevention pays - Kansas City Star
Camryn Manheim joins Lifetime pic - Variety
Confusion over Labour's plan to house young mothers in supervised ... - The Guardian
Gordon Brown strengthens pledge to reduce teenage pregnancy - The Guardian
Panel votes to restore abstinence education money - WNYT

Pet pregnancy prevention pays - Kansas City Star

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 08:49 PM PDT

The Humane Society of Greater Kansas City is to be commended for rescuing virtually all adoptable animals from the Wyandotte County municipal shelter since January, reducing euthanasia there this year.

However, such rescue operations, no matter how noble or massive, are not a sustainable solution to the problem of pet overpopulation, which is a community problem costing taxpayers hundreds of thousand of dollars each year, putting overwhelming burdens on area shelters and creating health and safety problems for neighborhoods.

The rate of reproduction of cats and dogs is exponential. The number of available homes for orphan pets increases only arithmetically — or not at all. Adoption alone simply cannot solve the problem.

The number of animals entering the shelters (intake) must be reduced. Spaying and neutering the animals most likely to contribute to pet overpopulation is essential to reducing intake, euthanasia and other animal control costs. Those high-risk animals include:

•Litters of kittens and mixed breed pups and their mothers.

•Non-neutered pets, who are more likely to roam and be aggressive than neutered pets.

•Unlicensed or unvaccinated pets.

•Pets of lower-income residents.

Jackson County and Kansas City have partnered with Spay & Neuter Kansas City to reduce pet overpopulation through spay and neuter. With their support, the nonprofit provides subsidized low-cost surgery for pets whose owners cannot afford the surgery. Spay & Neuter:

•Targets pet overpopulation in low-income, trouble-prone residential areas.

•Screens clients based on income.

•Works with animal control and veterinarians to vaccinate and neuter the animals at highest risk of contributing to pet overpopulation.

Spay & Neuter does not provide subsidized surgery to those who can afford such services, and it does not provide comprehensive veterinary care. It serves a market previously unserved by veterinarians. Forty percent of the animals it sterilizes have had a previous litter and a similar percentage live primarily outdoors, more vulnerable to pregnancy.

Spay & Neuter's efforts have resulted in a 21 percent decrease in the number of animals impounded in the last four years, and an astounding 28 percent drop in the number of animals euthanized at the two largest Jackson County municipal shelters.

The cost to Jackson County to ensure that a pet is spayed or neutered is only about half the cost to shelter a stray for five days and then euthanize it. That same cost is less than a 10th of the cost of euthanizing a litter if that pet remains unneutered, reproduces and its litter winds up at the shelter.

Sterilizing thousands of Wyandotte County pets will be expensive, but experts state that every community dollar spent on spaying and neutering saves $3 in future expenses.

The government of Wyandotte County should follow the lead of Jackson County and Kansas City and institute innovative spay/neuter programs that will sustainably reduce euthanasia long term. Such a program could be patterned after the highly successful efforts by Spay & Neuter Kansas City.

Knowing the dedicated staff members at the Humane Society, I am confident they would eagerly participate in a massive spay/neuter effort for low-income pet owners if the Unified Government of Wyandotte County decides to really solve the problem rather than simply put a Band-Aid on it.

Anne Henry is president of AnimalKind Inc. She lives in Mission Woods.

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Camryn Manheim joins Lifetime pic - Variety

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 08:42 PM PDT

Actress added to the cast of 'Pregnancy Pact'

Camryn Manheim has been added to the cast of Lifetime's original telepic "Pregnancy Pact."

Film is inspired by the true story of teenagers at Gloucester (Mass.) High School who agreed to get pregnant at the same time.

Manheim will play the nurse who alerts the school of the increasing number of pregnancies and offers contraceptives to those girls who aren't pregnant.

Von Zerneck-Sertner Films is set to produce, with Frank Von Zerneck and Robert Sertner serving as exec producers. Pam Davis ("House") and Teena Booth ("Fab Five: The Texas Cheerleader Scandal") will write.

Production is currently under way, and "Pact" is scheduled to air on Lifetime in first quarter 2010. Thora Birch and Nancy Travis star.

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Confusion over Labour's plan to house young mothers in supervised ... - The Guardian

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 05:28 PM PDT

Pregnant woman. Photograph: Katie Collins/PA

The prospect of supervised homes for teenage mothers was one of the most eye-catching policy announcements Gordon Brown made in his speech, but the absence of any clear detail about how the commitment would be implemented triggered unease from charities who support young parents.

"I do think it's time to address a problem that for too long has gone unspoken, the number of children having children. For it cannot be right, for a girl of 16, to get pregnant, be given the keys to a council flat and be left on her own," Brown told the conference.

"From now on all 16- and 17-year-old parents who get support from the taxpayer will be placed in a network of supervised homes. These shared homes will offer not just a roof over their heads, but a new start in life where they learn responsibility and how to raise their children properly. That's better for them, better for their babies and better for us all in the long run."

Many such supervised homes exist already, but currently the decision of whether or not to be housed in one is left to the individual young parent. The government's teenage pregnancy strategy, launched in 1999, has already pledged to offer sheltered housing to those young parents unable to continue living at home. Despite this commitment, teenage parent support groups say sufficient resources have not so far been made available to fund enough buildings to be fitted out as mother-and-baby hostels – some areas have good provision, others have opened fewer homes.

The commitment to providing more of these homes was met with clear support from charities, but the suggestion lingering underneath that there might be an element of compulsion to the scheme elicited alarm.

No details of how the policy would work were immediately available from the Department for Children, Schools and Families, prompting one campaigner to ask if there was to be "compulsory internment" of teenage mothers in hostels. There was no information available about whether there would be extra funding for such a scheme, or whether there would be any obligation for teenage parents to move into supervised housing.

The Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group welcomed the prime minister's announcement that there would be more support for young parents, adding: "Many young parents are still living in unacceptable housing conditions and we welcome the government's commitment to address this situation."

However, in the absence of further details of the commitment, other charities were concerned by the tough tone that accompanied the pledge, which several saw as an attempt to engage with a middle-England contention that teenage girls get pregnant in order to get council accommodation.

Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said: "This is an ill-thought out sop to an ill-informed section of public opinion that misunderstands the causes and consequences of teenage pregnancy."

Hilary Pannack, chief executive of Straight Talking Peer Education, a charity that works to reduce teenage pregnancies and to support teenage parents, said: "There is an assumption in Gordon Brown's speech that all teenage parents are bad parents but this is not the case."

In 1998, Labour announced a target of halving teenage pregnancy by 2010. Since then, overall rates of teenage pregnancy have fallen by 12.6% among under-18s and by 12.3% among under-16s.

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Gordon Brown strengthens pledge to reduce teenage pregnancy - The Guardian

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 09:15 AM PDT

"And I do think it's time to address a problem that for too long has gone unspoken, the number of children having children. For it cannot be right, for a girl of 16, to get pregnant, be given the keys to a council flat and be left on her own.

"From now on, all 16- and 17-year-old parents who get support from the taxpayer will be placed in a network of supervised homes. These shared homes will offer not just a roof over their heads, but a new start in life where they learn responsibility and how to raise their children properly.

"That's better for them, better for their babies and better for us all in the long run."

Gordon Brown's promise to house all 16- and 17-year-old parents in mother and baby hostels echoes an aspiration that has been embraced by the government's teenage pregnancy strategy for the past decade.

However, although in the past the government has said that teenage parents should be offered support through supervised housing, charities point out that the resources have not previously been available to set up sufficient hostels to accommodate all the teenage mothers needing support.

"It has taken much longer than anticipated," one charity worker said. "Before, it was just a vague promise. This appears to be much more concrete."

In 1998, Labour announced a target of halving teenage pregnancy by 2010. Since then, overall rates of teenage pregnancy have fallen by 12.6% among under-18s and by 12.3% among under-16s, and charities have described the government's strategy as "patchy".

The government was forced to defend its strategy for reducing the number of teenage pregnancies earlier this year, after new figures showed that conception rates among under-16s had risen for the first time since 2002.

More than 8,000 girls under 16 became pregnant in 2007, the latest figures estimate. Conceptions per 1,000 girls aged 12 to 15 in England and Wales rose from 7.8 in 2006 to 8.1 in 2007, the figures showed.

Rates among girls between the ages of 15 and 17 rose slightly, from 40.9 per 1,000 in 2006, to 41.9 per 1,000 a year later.

A £20.5m package to improve teenagers' access to contraception and to information about the risks of unprotected sex was announced in February, when the figures were released.

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Panel votes to restore abstinence education money - WNYT

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 08:42 PM PDT

(AP) WASHINGTON - A Senate committee voted Tuesday night to restore $50 million a year in federal funding for abstinence-only education that President Barack Obama has pushed to eliminate.

The 12-11 vote by the Senate Finance Committee came over objections from its chairman, Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana.

Two Democrats _ Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas _ joined all 10 committee Republicans in voting "yes" on the measure by Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah.

The measure would still have to pass the full House and Senate. Hatch said abstinence education had been shown to work, though Baucus disagreed. Obama had proposed in his 2010 budget to direct money spent on abstinence-only education to broader teen pregnancy-reduction programs.

An alternate measure offered by Baucus also passed. Baucus' measure, which passed 14-9, would make money available for education on contraception and sexually transmitted diseases, among other things, in addition to abstinence. Lawmakers will have to reconcile the two measures, both approved during debate on a sweeping health overhaul bill, as the legislation moves forward.