Legislation has been reintroduced in Congress to expand fertility services for severely injured troops and female veterans, to include advanced reproductive health treatments and adoption services for those who can’t have children biologically.
Month: February 2015
Infertility Struggles? It’s Not Always a Woman’s Issue
Stories about couples struggling with infertility often feature the woman as the protagonist. But men also face fertility problems. At the Shady Grove facilities, men are part of the infertility problem in 40 to 50 percent of couples who come in, says Gilbert Mottla, a reproductive endocrinologist with Shady Grove in the District of Columbia. “It’s fairly common for us to find both [partners] are contributing to [infertility],” Mottla says. Less common, however, is to find that a man is the sole cause of infertility.
N.J. Gay Couple’s Custody Battle with Sperm Donor Could Set Precedent
A lesbian couple from Salem County are locked in a custody battle over their son after a sperm donor sued them for parenting time.
IUDs Can Be Practical for Teenagers, But Pediatricians May Lack Training in their Use
When Wendy Swanson started out as a pediatrician eight years ago, it never crossed her mind to bring up the option of intrauterine devices — an insertable form of long-acting contraception — when she had her regular birth-control discussions with teenage patients who were sexually active.But Swanson’s approach changed after a casual conversation with her sister-in-law. This relative wasn’t a doctor, but she worked at the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign of North Carolina, and she told Swanson that the devices could be used as a first choice of contraception for teenagers. Now Swanson regularly discusses IUDs, which are more than 99 percent effective, in her Seattle practice.
Fertility Treatments: From Sci-Fi to Reality
Advances in fertility medicine are fast-paced. New ones are hardly out of the lab before they’re offered as “treatments” – one fertility doctor’s “experimental” is another’s “state-of-the-art.”
Understanding the Worldwide Contraception Crisis
In the richer parts of the world, contraception is often seen as a vital means of maintaining control over one’s life, but the prospect of an unwanted pregnancy isn’t, for most people and for the most part, a life-and-death issue. That’s not true for women in less developed parts of the world, though; there, as the authors of a new study in Human Reproduction point out, citing World Health Organization research, “after becoming pregnant without intention, many of these women are presented with a stark set of scenarios: risk of death, disability and lower educational and employment potential.” Their children also face heightened risks of dying at a very young age.
Should Celebrities Come Clean About Infertility?
Singer Sophie B. Hawkins, 50, recently dropped a major baby bomb — not only is she expecting her second child (a little girl), she became pregnant using 15 embryos that she had frozen back when she was 31-years-old.
Celiac Disease Might Explain Fertility Problems
Celiac disease may be at the root of some women’s problems with infertility, Indian researchers say.
Buying Time: How Egg Freezing Has Moved Into the Mainstream
As more Canadian women turn to egg freezing to focus on building careers or as they wait for the right partner, The Globe’s Carly Weeks explores the fertility business, its procedures, and promises that might be too good to be true.
Patients Decry ProMedica’s Plans to Close Toledo’s Only Fertility Lab
As ProMedica finalizes plans to shutter Toledo’s only fertility clinic with an on-site lab at the end of this month, patients who are being forced to leave their doctor in the midst of fertility treatments are questioning why it is closing.