“Pre-pregnancy planning will be focus of seminar - Ventura County Star” plus 4 more

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• Pre-pregnancy planning will be focus of seminar - Ventura County Star
• Go! New York: Pregnancy Fitness - CBS 2
• Pregnancy fine: Community objects - Witness
• Stress management boosts fertility - United Press International
• A Response to Critics of the Guttmacher Study on Global Abortion ... - RH Reality Check

Pre-pregnancy planning will be focus of seminar - Ventura County Star Posted: 19 Oct 2009 08:32 PM PDT Dr. Michael C. Lu, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and public health at UCLA, will discuss what a woman can do before she gets pregnant to give her child the best start in life. Lu, author of a recent book on the subject, will present his research, findings and advice during a seminar in Simi Valley on Sunday. Lu also is a lead investigator for Los Angeles and Ventura counties for the federally funded National Children's Study, which is tracking 100,000 children from before birth to age 21 to better understand the causes of and identify prevention strategies for major childhood disorders such as autism, obesity, diabetes and asthma. Lu's seminar and book, "Get Ready to Get Pregnant: Your Complete Pre-Pregnancy Guide to Making a Smart and Healthy Baby," is designed to provide a step-by-step plan for a safer pregnancy and a healthier child. Lu will share his advice and take questions. The lecture is free. It will take place at 4 p.m. in the Simi Valley Seventh-day Adventist Church at 1636 Sinaloa Road. Reservations are not required but are suggested. For questions and to reserve a seat, call 526-0141. This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

Go! New York: Pregnancy Fitness - CBS 2 Posted: 19 Oct 2009 04:58 PM PDT E-mail Close Window E-mail This Page The following page was sent to Go! New York: Pregnancy Fitness A copy was sent to your e-mail address Send Another E-mail Print Share +  Digg  Facebook Stumble It! del.icio.us  Fark  Twitter Go! New York: Pregnancy Fitness NEW YORK (CBS) ― Click to enlarge CBS Close Many expectant mothers may be nervous about how much they can get their workout. Sally Rudnick is pregnant with her second child, and she is doing what she believes is the best form of exercise for a pregnant woman: walking. In addition to that, she said, "I swim and a little bit of yoga." Elizabeth Stein says she's got it just right. She's been a midwife for 24 years and delivered 2,600 babies including Sally's first. She's also a former professional athlete, racing horses for 13 years. "I only recommend exercising, not training. You're not training for the marathon, you're growing a baby," she said. Stein said women who are heavy into fitness and exercising should think about scaling back when they are pregnant. "When you're doing a workout, if you can talk through an exercise you're not straining your heart. If you are panting that's not good. You're raising your core body temperature and that is not good for the fetus." You've heard the expression "eating for two." A lot of women decide that being pregnant is the time to really indulge and enjoy themselves, but experts say that's not the best idea. "The weight gain that's recommended is 25 to 35 pounds. I try and stick to 25 to 30. You can't pig out," Stein said. Every extra pound you gain is also affecting the weight of the baby. "If you gain 40 and 50 pounds and you make an 8, 9 or 10 pound baby, that's the same baby that has to come though your pelvis and come out, which means you have a greater chance of caesarean delivery," Stein said. In addition to mild exercise and small meals, Eat well - small frequent meals Obviously - no cigarettes or alcohol Prenatal vitamins with folic acid are essential Dental check up is key Be proactive and get answers "It's really important not to have bacteria infections in your mouth. these bacteria can cause preterm labor. They also cause infection and pain during the entire pregnancy," Stein said. Rest as simple as it sounds is the number one most overlooked by pregnant women, that and to respect nature. "Nature runs the show. I'm always very humble in front of nature," Stein said. (© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.) This content has passed through fivefilters.org. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Pregnancy fine: Community objects - Witness Posted: 19 Oct 2009 03:03 PM PDT Pregnancy fine: Community objects 20 Oct 2009 COMMUNITY members in Underberg's Ridge area, under a Stoffelton area inkosi, Nozipho Molefe, are calling for the scrapping of the R30 fine for girls who get pregnant out of wedlock. The fine, which was recently introduced by Molefe's traditional council, has caused an outcry in some quarters of the tribe, especially the youth. According to Molefe, the fine is for "cleansing" girls who get pregnant while unmarried. Community members said the imposition of the fine is unfair and steep as most of them are unemployed and live in poverty. Girls and their partners are supposed to pay the fine for getting pregnant. The fine is used by the council for the "cleansing" ceremonies of girls in the tribe. Molefe said the fine exists to curb teenage and out of wedlock pregnancies and it also a way of trying to reduce the alarming spread of HIV/Aids in the area. It is also to encourage girls who are unmarried to adhere to the culture of saving themselves for marriage, said Molefe. However, fining of people for having babies when not married is not Zulu culture.   This content has passed through fivefilters.org. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Stress management boosts fertility - United Press International Posted: 19 Oct 2009 09:15 PM PDT BOSTON, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Women having difficulty conceiving a child might be helped by participating in a stress management program before in vitro fertilization, U.S. researchers say. Alice Domar, executive director of The Domar Center for Mind/Body Health at Boston IVF, and of Harvard Medical School, says women who participated in a stress management program prior to or during their second IVF cycle had a 160 percent greater pregnancy rate than women who did not participate in a program. The stress management program was designed to educate women on the utilization of cognitive, relaxation and lifestyle techniques to manage stress. Stress management had an even greater impact on pregnancy rates for women who showed higher baselines symptoms of depression. Pregnancy rates increased to 67 percent for women with signs of depression at the start of the study who engaged in the stress management program vs. no pregnancies for those who did not. "Reproductive health experts have long wondered about the impact that stress may have on fertility, thus impeding a woman's ability to conceive," Domar says in a statement. "This study shows that stress management may improve pregnancy rates, minimizing the stress of fertility management itself, improving the success rates of IVF procedures." This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

A Response to Critics of the Guttmacher Study on Global Abortion ... - RH Reality Check Posted: 19 Oct 2009 07:35 PM PDT Following the widely covered release of a new Guttmacher Institute study on global abortion trends—which found that increases in contraceptive use have contributed to worldwide declines in the rates of both unintended pregnancy and abortion—some anti-choice activists have criticized our findings and policy recommendations. I'd like to take this opportunity to respond. Abortion policy and abortion incidence An overarching finding of our study is that the legal status of abortion is not highly correlated with the extent to which abortions actually occur in a given country or region. In fact, the study found that abortion rates are about equal in countries where the procedure is broadly legal and countries where it is highly restricted. Antiabortion activists attempt to challenge this finding using the United States as an example. They point to recent Guttmacher research showing that the Hyde amendment—which prohibits the use of federal Medicaid funds to pay for abortions—deters some women from obtaining an abortion. They also note that in the years immediately after abortion was legalized nationwide in 1973, the U.S. abortion rate rose. Those who claim that Medicaid funding restrictions have significantly reduced the incidence of abortion in the United States are fundamentally misreading the Guttmacher Institute's study on the impact of the Hyde amendment. Indeed, our study concluded that one in four of America's poorest women who would have an abortion if it were paid for by Medicaid instead continue the pregnancy to term. However, that does not mean the Hyde amendment has reduced abortions significantly, as some antiabortion activists have claimed, nor would restoration of public funding have a substantial impact in reverse. We estimate that if the Hyde amendment were repealed, the annual number of abortions nationwide would increase by approximately 33,000—increasing the U.S. abortion rate by only 2.5 percent (there were a total of 1.21 million abortions in 2005). Our study documents that the Hyde amendment leaves some of the country's poorest and most vulnerable women with no choice but to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. It also proves the larger point that large numbers of women will go to great lengths to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. When denied Medicaid funding, three out of four indigent women still manage to scrape together the funds for a procedure, not to mention arrange for the transportation and child care they need and comply with state consent and waiting period requirements (which likewise have not been shown to have any significant impact on abortion rates), in order to obtain an abortion they feel they need. This often comes at great expense to themselves and their families, as money meant for rent, utilities or groceries is instead used for the procedure. In developing countries, the stakes are much higher, as the abortions women obtain are usually illegal or clandestine, posing terrible risks to their lives and health. As our report notes, there are about 20 million unsafe abortions annually, and 70,000 women die from unsafe, clandestine procedures each year. Fully eight million suffer severe complications, only five million of whom receive treatment for these complications. More broadly, it's important to note that the new Guttmacher Institute study on global abortion trends does not claim that the legal status of abortion has no effect. Rather, its conclusion is as follows: "The fact that the abortion rate in the less developed world, where the procedure is legally restricted in many countries, is quite similar to that in the more developed world, where abortion is largely permitted on broad grounds in almost all countries, confirms the lack of an inherent relationship between the prevalence of abortion and its legal status. Abortion rates can be quite low in some countries where the procedure is legal on broad grounds, and quite high in many countries where it is highly restricted. Restricting abortion by law does not guarantee a low abortion rate, nor does permitting it on broad grounds guarantee a high rate." (The lack of a strong relationship between abortion legality and incidence is also underscored by our finding that the decline in worldwide abortion occurred alongside a global trend toward liberalizing abortion laws. Nineteen countries have significantly reduced restrictions in their abortion laws since 1997, while only three countries have substantially increased legal restrictions.) As for abortion trends in the United States post-nationwide legalization in 1973, anti-choice activists tell only part of the story. True, in the years immediately following Roe v Wade, documented abortions in the country increased—to a considerable extent, however, this was a case of legal procedures replacing previous illegal procedures. The official U.S. abortion rate peaked at 29.3 per 1,000 women aged 15–44 in 1981, but—as the national rate of unintended pregnancy declined with increased contraceptive use, especially among unmarried women—the abortion rate also declined steadily to 19.4 abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age by 2005. The number of abortions declined as well, to a total of 1.2 million in 2005, 25 percent below the all-time high of 1.6 million abortions in 1990. Change takes time Critics of our report—as the example above indicates—often cite selective time periods to make their points about the impact of abortion legalization, focusing on short-term outcomes (like the increase in the United States right after abortion was legalized), but not mentioning long-term changes (like consistent decline in the U.S. rate after 1980). In fact, reducing unintended pregnancy and the need for abortion takes time, and the time required for policy changes to have an impact can vary widely from country to country. The bottom line, however, is that—notwithstanding the legality and wide availability of abortion—where contraceptive services are widely available and accessible, levels of contraceptive use will increase and will be accompanied, over time, by falling abortion rates. Consider the experiences of countries like South Korea and Russia. South Korea experienced a dramatic decrease in desired family size beginning in the 1960s. As women's motivation for small families intensified, abortion and contraceptive prevalence rates rose. Although it took a number of years, the abortion rate eventually leveled off and then began to fall, however, as contraceptive use continued to increase. In contrast, Russia—which historically had some of the world's highest abortion rates— saw dramatic changes within a relatively short period of time. Until the 1980s, it was not uncommon for a Russian woman wanting only two children to have 10 or more abortions in her lifetime, because modern contraceptives were essentially unavailable in the country. The situation changed dramatically in the late 1980s, when foreign-made modern contraceptives became widely available: Russia's unintended pregnancy and abortion rates decreased by half in less than one decade. (Similarly, as our new study found, the decline in global abortion rates over the past decade was heavily concentrated in Eastern Europe, where abortion is broadly legal but use of modern contraceptives has increased dramatically.) The Key Role of Contraception Fundamentally, some anti-choice activists simply cannot accept the fact that that increases in contraceptive use contribute to declines in unintended pregnancy and abortion.  They persist in claiming that contraception is ineffective and only leads to more unintended pregnancies and abortions. The link between declining abortion incidence and increased contraceptive use is well established (and well illustrated by many of the above examples). Behind nearly every abortion is an unintended pregnancy, and it is clear that the best way for a sexually active person to avoid unintended pregnancy is to use contraception consistently and correctly. A recent Guttmacher Institute analysis shows just how important contraceptive use is for U.S. women. It found that the two-thirds of U.S. women at risk of unintended pregnancy who use contraception consistently and correctly account for only 5 percent of unintended pregnancies. In other words, the one-third of women who use contraception intermittently or not at all account for fully 95 percent of all unintended pregnancies. Other research indicates that using any contraceptive method reduces a couple's chances of having an unintended pregnancy by 85 percent, and properly using the most effective methods virtually eliminates that risk. Of course, no contraceptive method is perfect, just as no human being is perfect. Unintended pregnancy will never be reduced to zero, and accordingly, there will always be a need for safe, legal abortion. But one thing is certain: Nonuse of contraception, as anti-choice activists appear to advocate, is hardly an answer. It would only lead to dramatic increases in both unintended pregnancy and abortion in the United States and around the world. This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

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