The Choice To Be Pro-Life
By Tierney Temple Fairchild, an education and management consultant in Charlottesville (THE WASHINGTON POST, 01/11/08):
I had a choice, and I chose life. Does that make me pro-choice or pro-life? Our political parties tell us we can’t have it both ways. If I am pro-choice, then I must be for abortion. If I am pro-life, I may be lauded for a heroic choice when in fact none existed.
Ten years ago, I made a decision to continue a pregnancy that would lead to a child born with Down syndrome. My husband and I spent two exhausting weeks poring over medical prognoses and…
Let’s Talk About Sex
By Charles M. Blow (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 06/09/08):
Sarah Palin has a pregnant teenager. And, she’s not alone. According to a report published in 2007, there are more than 400,000 other American girls in the same predicament.
In fact, a 2001 Unicef report said that the United States teenage birthrate was higher than any other member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The U.S. tied Hungary for the most abortions. This was in spite of the fact that girls in the U.S. were not the most sexually active. Denmark held that title. But, its teenage birthrate was one-sixth of ours,…
A hard pill to swallow
By Ellie Levenson (THE GUARDIAN, 05/05/08):
The news isn’t good for the morning-after pill. A constitutional court ruling in Chile recently banned the public health system from distributing free emergency contraception. In some parts of the US, there are legislative attempts to make access to the pill more difficult on the grounds that it is an abortion-inducing medicine. And while doctors in Italy who refused two women emergency contraception may face sanctions, there is no shortage of political and religious leaders supporting them.
Compared with these examples, emergency contraception is pretty accessible in the UK, but pharmacists still fall short in helping women…
Too old to be your mother
By Zoe Williams (THE GUARDIAN, 25/10/06):
A new study shows that women who give birth in their 50s are at no disadvantage to younger women. This doesn’t surprise me greatly. Of course everyone’s energy levels diminish over time, but there are pay-offs. Younger women waste a lot of their energy worrying. Plus, they’re more likely to be on a stupid diet. That’ll play havoc with energy levels.What is surprising is that this rather nebulous concept, “ability to cope”, has been one of the cornerstones of NHS fertility strategy pretty much since IVF was invented. Women in their 50s and 60s have been…
We don’t browbeat women into having caesareans
By Florence Wilcock, an obstetrician specialising in care during labour. Response to ‘Yes, we do need to know‘ (THE GUARDIAN, 19/09/06):
Annalisa Barbieri claims that women are being bullied into having caesarean sections, despite the health risks (Yes we do need to know, September 11). “Once you’ve had one C-section you often have to fight for a vaginal birth,” she said, adding that “women find themselves browbeaten into having a ‘voluntary’ C-section.”As an obstetrician working in a maternity unit, far from “browbeating” women into having caesareans I spend a large amount of time counselling women regarding the pros and cons of…
Yes, we do need to know
By Annalisa Barbieri (THE GUARDIAN, 11/09/06):
When I was pregnant, caesareans didn’t figure in my thinking. I neither considered nor planned for one: they were for celebrities or women on the verge of death. So, ending up with an emergency C-section after three days in labour was, to say the least, a shock. Suddenly all the studies about caesareans were relevant to me: I was one of the statistics.
The simple fact is that, although caesareans can be lifesaving, it’s just not how a baby is meant to be born. The latest research, published this month in the journal Birth: Issues in Perinatal…
El riesgo de poner a parir
Por José Manuel Bajo Arenas, presidente de Sociedad Española de Obstetricia y Ginecología y Catedrático de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (EL MUNDO, 20/08/06):
La Sociedad Española de Obstetricia y Ginecología está contemplando cómo, desde foros judiciales, se atribuye a una mala asistencia al parto todo tipo de parálisis cerebral, cuya etiología es desconocida, y que ante la falta de causa explicable se coloca bajo el paraguas de asfixia intraparto. Es una solución simplista para un problema complejo, pero se ha encontrado desde el punto de vista compensatorio, una víctima propiciatoria, el obstetra-ginecólogo a quien inculpar, con unos argumentos tan tenazmente…
Por el derecho a nacer con dignidad
Por Consuelo Catalá Pérez, portavoz de Igualdad del PSPV-PSOE en las Cortes Valencianas (EL PAÍS, 07/06/06):
Estamos inmersos en el debate sobre el derecho a morir con dignidad como algo necesario para devolver a las personas su condición de personas en los últimos momentos de su vida. Pues bien, al igual y con mayor motivo este país debe poner de una vez por todas encima de la mesa la necesidad acuciante de devolver la dignidad a las mujeres y a los bebés en el momento del nacimiento.
Una dignidad que lejos de alejarse de las evidencias científicas que el desarrollo de la…
Parents who don’t know what children are for
By Minette Marrin (THE TIMES, 07/05/06):
In some parts of the animal kingdom, when times are harsh, adult creatures start having problems breeding. Mating patterns are interrupted and the animals either eat their young or spontaneously abort them or abandon them or don’t have young at all. In the past few days it has begun to seem as if something like this is happening in the human species.
In one short week it has been reported that Britons are putting money and work ahead of having babies, that they are having them later. When they do have babies they don’t know what to…
Nazi eugenics, Virginia Woolf and the morality of designer babies
By Jonathan Glover, the author of Choosing Children: the Ethical Dilemmas of Genetic Intervention, and director of the Centre of Medical Law and Ethics at King’s College London (THE GUARDIAN, 06/05/06):
The intrusive criticism directed at Dr Patricia Rashbrook for becoming pregnant at 62 insists that her choice is unfair to the child. This is misguided. Suppose it is a disadvantage to have an older mother. If so, adoption agencies may prefer younger women. But fertility treatment is not adoption. The choice for Dr Rashbrook’s child is not between having her or some other mother. The alternative is not to be…
Behind this outcry lurks the image of a haggard witch and her demon child
By Polly Toynbee (THE GUARDIAN, 05/05/06):
Oh yuk! A mother at 63! The woman’s a child psychiatrist, shouldn’t she know better? How selfish! How grotesque! Here we go, the old war cry goes up again against wicked women who defy nature and refuse to accept their fate. Well, defying nature is often human progress. Mother Nature was never women’s (or men’s or children’s) best friend. Red in tooth and claw, she murdered mothers in childbirth by the million, leaving children orphaned at a tender age as often as not. Kindly nature slaughtered young children in great battalions too. She left great regiments…
