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160 Healthy Babies Lost for Every 50 Down’s Cases Detected with Amniocentesis By Hilary White LONDON, August 21, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The risks of amniocentesis to the unborn child have long been known but now a new analysis by a British doctor has shown that using the tests in seek-and-destroy missions for Down's syndrome and other genetic abnormalities results in the deaths of hundreds of healthy babies every year in Britain. Dr. Hylton Meire, the retired physician and author of texts on ultrasound, calculates that for every 50 children with Down's Syndrome successfully identified and killed by abortion, 160 non-affected...

Despite Risks That Range From Fetal Distress to Hemorrhage, Some Women Are Choosing to Give Birth Without Medical Assistance

A dozen girls, some perched awkwardly with their pregnant bellies flush against the desks, were struggling over a high school geometry assignment on a recent afternoon. No pencils, no textbooks, no Pythagorean theorem. Instead, they sewed quilts. That is what passes for math in one of New York City’s four high schools for pregnant girls, this one in Harlem. “It ties into geometry,” said Patricia Martin, the principal. “They’re cutting shapes.” Created in the 1960s, when pregnant girls were such pariahs that they were forced to leave school until their babies were born, the city school system’s four pregnancy schools...

Women can take the anti-AIDS drug nevirapine to protect their unborn children without endangering their ability to undergo life-saving antiretroviral treatment later on, a new study has found. The results are good news for poor women in Africa, Asia and Latin America who must take nevirapine, an inexpensive first-line drug that often prevents the transmission of H.I.V. from mother to child. The drug lingers in the blood up to three weeks, and if the mother has the virus that causes AIDS, its presence encourages the growth of nevirapine-resistant strains. That has led to fears that any antiretroviral drug cocktail containing...

For years, women have had it drummed into them that prenatal care is the key to having a healthy baby, and that they should see a doctor as soon as they know they are pregnant. But by then, it may already be too late. Public health officials are now encouraging women to make sure they are in optimal health well in advance of a pregnancy to reduce the risk of preventable birth defects and complications. They have recast the message to emphasize not only prenatal care, as they did in the past, but also what they are calling “preconception care.”...

Earlier this month... a major hospital in Northeast Philadelphia that used to deliver 1600 babies a year.... closed its maternity ward Health reporter Anita Brikman says this is part of trend that some call a "crisis" which could put mothers and babies at risk. The Chancey family is celebrating the birth of their first baby girl.... Alexis Paige. Mom Kelly delivered her two older brothers at Frankford Torresdale Hospital. But is now at Holy Redeemer Hospital because Frankford Torresdale got out of the baby-delivering business. Kelly Chancey, Northeast Philadelphia.Yeah, it was a little inconvenient. Doctors appointments go from monthly to...

A new study debunks the notion that having sex in the final weeks of pregnancy makes labor start sooner.Researchers at Ohio State University Medical Center studied 93 women in their final three weeks of pregnancy. When all was said and done, those who were sexually active had carried their babies an average of 39.9 weeks. Women who abstained, for whatever reason, deliver at 39.3 weeks on average."Patients may continue to hear the 'old wives' tale' that intercourse will hasten labor, but according to this data, they should not hear it from the medical community," said obstetrician Jonathan Schaffir.The results are...

<p>Roy A. Filly, M.D.</p> <p>I have just reached the 30th anniversary of the first obstetrical sonogram I performed. Even having witnessed each of the technological advancements in sonography over those three decades, it is still difficult to comprehend the enormous improvements in image quality that have occurred. These improvements have brought sonography from a “promising” diagnostic tool to a mainstay of modern imaging. However, nowhere in medicine has this technique had a more profound impact than in the field of obstetrics. Thirty years ago there was essentially no such thing as obstetrical imaging and prenatal diagnosis was in its infancy.</p>

Kim James was 17 when she first learned what a midwife does. Though she still can’t place her finger on it, she knew it was what she wanted to be. “It is something that always interested me, and I am not sure why,” she said. “It’s not lucrative, the hours are terrible and most of the work is done in the middle of the night. “But,” she adds, “it is extremely rewarding work.” James began working in 1989 at Cherche La Femme, Columbia’s first birthing center. The center was co-founded by a certified nurse-midwife, Sharon Lee; a physician, Elizabeth Allemann;...

A family doctor has been summoned to a formal hearing over his refusal to put a 34-year-old male patient on the list for screening for cervical cancer.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pregnant women coached through their first delivery do not fare much better than those who just do what feels natural, according to a study released on Friday. Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern found that women who were told to push 10 minutes for every contraction gave birth 13 minutes faster than those who were not given specific instructions. But they said the difference has little impact on the overall birth, which experts say can take up to 14 hours on average. "There were no other findings to show that coaching or not coaching was advantageous...

Women should have a family first - before they are 35 - and leave their career until later, a group of leading doctors said yesterday. The obstetricians and gynaecologists said the increasing number of women delaying having children were defying nature and risking heartbreak. Writing in the British Medical Journal, they recommended that if women wanted families and a career, they should have children earlier, and called for more support for younger mothers. Women's groups voiced caution over putting a deadline on childbirth but agreed on the need for more support. Susan Bewley, consultant obstetrician at St Thomas' Hospital in...

<p>For some women, birth has become the latest battleground for reproductive rights.</p> <p>At a growing number of hospitals, women are being forced to schedule a repeat cesarean section just because they already had one. Doctors and hospitals say they fear lawsuits if they allow a patient to attempt a vaginal birth after a C-section - called a VBAC - and something goes awry.</p>

Taking on one of the most highly charged questions in the abortion debate, a team of doctors has concluded that fetuses probably cannot feel pain in the first six months of gestation and therefore do not need anesthesia during abortions. Their report, being published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association, is based on a review of several hundred scientific papers, and it says that nerve connections in the brain are unlikely to have developed enough for the fetus to feel pain before 29 weeks. The finding poses a direct challenge to proposed federal and state laws that...

Having an abortion almost doubles a woman's risk of giving birth dangerously early in a later pregnancy, according to research that will provoke fresh debate over the most controversial of all medical procedures. A French study of 2,837 births - the first to investigate the link between terminations and extremely premature births - found that mothers who had previously had an abortion were 1.7 times more likely to give birth to a baby at less than 28 weeks' gestation. Many babies born this early die soon after birth, and a large number who survive suffer serious disability. Peter Bowen-Simpkins Peter...

Having an abortion almost doubles a woman's risk of giving birth dangerously early in a later pregnancy, according to research that will provoke fresh debate over the most controversial of all medical procedures. A French study of 2,837 births - the first to investigate the link between terminations and extremely premature births - found that mothers who had previously had an abortion were 1.7 times more likely to give birth to a baby at less than 28 weeks' gestation. Many babies born this early die soon after birth, and a large number who survive suffer serious disability. The research leader,...

http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2002/09/09/prsa0909.htm Accepting no deliveries: Obstetricians are hard to find in the Mississippi Delta When medical liability insurance drives physicians out of rural Mississippi, pregnant women are left feeling the pain. By Tanya Albert, AMNews staff. Sept. 9, 2002. Cleveland, Miss. -- It's 10 a.m. on a Monday and the magazines in the office shared by obstetrician-gynecologists Mark Blackwood, MD, and Bradley Baugh, MD, are still neatly fanned out on waiting room tables. The cushioned chairs sit empty. No one stands in the hallway waiting to call patients in, The five examining rooms are vacant. A steady stream of patients --...

Dr. John C. Nelson, an obstetrician, understands the desire of some parents to capture the miracle of birth on video. But a few years ago, he put a stop to the practice among his patients for fear the delivery-room footage could someday become Exhibit A in court. "What once used to be really fun and warm and cozy and so forth is now a potential nail in the coffin from a liability perspective," said Nelson, who practices in Salt Lake City and delivered babies until 2003. He is now president of the American Medical Association. Many doctors and hospitals around...

Women who are overweight or obese have a much higher chance of becoming pregnant because their Pill has failed, researchers have found. Overweight women were 60% more likely to fall pregnant while on the Pill. Obese women were 70% more likely, found a study in Obstetrics and Gynaecology by a team from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle. It suggested that of 100 women on the Pill, an extra two to four would fall pregnant due to being overweight. The Pill is usually estimated to be over 99% effective. This means that less than one woman in 100...

To the Editor: Re "Trying to Avoid 2nd Caesarean, Many Find Choice Isn't Theirs" (front page, Nov. 29): I do not believe that the issue of whether a vaginal delivery can or should be performed in a pregnancy after a prior Caesarean should be framed as a matter of a woman's right to choose. It is perfectly reasonable for a hospital or a doctor to decide not to offer this service because it is felt to be too risky and the patient who desires it would be better served in a tertiary care center where obstetric complications are more routinely...