Pregnancies

As devoted royal watchers, the Ministry was thrilled with Monday's news that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting their first child.  The only thing that would make Will and Kate more lovable would be teeny Will-and-Kate's.  Though the palace says the duchess' pregnancy is in its early stages , here are five things to look forward to as she carries the next in line for the House of Windsor:  1. Maternity fashion ...

Doctors should give underage teenagers prescriptions for emergency contraceptives like Plan B before they start having sex instead of waiting until a young patient's "plan A" goes awry, the American Academy of Pediatrics says in a new policy statement. It says doctors should also counsel teens on the various options for emergency birth control as part of an overall strategy to reduce teen pregnancy. The academy is issuing the new position paper, published online Monday by the journal Pediatrics, as physicians and other health experts struggle to reduce the nation's high birthrate among adolescents.

The rate of abortions in the United States fell by 5%, the largest single-year decrease in a decade, researchers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. The decline is outlined in the annual abortion surveillance data for the year 2009, the latest available. It was published on Wednesday in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. About 18% of all pregnancies in the United States end in abortion, the CDC noted. Factors from the availability of abortion providers, state laws, the general economy and access to health services including contraception, can all influence the abortion rate, according to the CDC. An important way to reduce abortions is to eliminate unwanted pregnancies.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a call Tuesday for birth control pills to be sold over the counter. Currently oral contraceptives are available only with a doctor's prescription. In a policy statement, the organization argues that making birth control pills easier to get will translate into fewer unwanted pregnancies. These unplanned pregnancies remain a major problem in the United States, they write, accounting for approximately 50% of all pregnancies.

To be fair, Richard Mourdock, the U.S. Senate candidate in Indiana, isn't a myth-slinging blowhard like another GOP contender for the Senate, Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri. It's hard to forget Akin's less-than-expert medical opinion that in cases of "legitimate rape," women's bodies have ways to prevent a pregnancy, or as he put it, "shut that whole thing down. " Mourdock, a "tea party" candidate who won the GOP nomination over a more moderate Republican, was speaking on matters of faith, not (pseudo)

Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock opposes abortion even in the case of rape and incest, he said at a Tuesday night debate, because pregnancy from rape is "something that God intended to happen.” Mourdock, who is in a tight race with Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly, was responding to a question about whether abortion should be legal in cases of rape or incest. “I know there are some who disagree, and I respect their point of view, but I believe that life begins at conception,” the tea party-backed Mourdock said.

Taking a common class of antidepressants called serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SRIs, during pregnancy alters the developmental time-course of the child's language processing, according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. While the results are striking, they hardly suggest the practice should be stopped: The researchers found that the children of women who are depressed while pregnant and who do not take medication are also born with an altered course of development.

Will Marissa Mayer's high-profile pregnancy help end pregnancy discrimination? The Yahoo CEO, who gave birth last week, is the topic of a New York Magazine article by Lisa Miller, which, among other things, delves into Mayer's idea of work-life balance. From the article : For her, parenthood is not a special category of extracurricular activity. Mayer's approach to questions of work-life balance is to give everyone -- male, female, married, single, with children or without -- the freedom to leave work for the things that matter most, whether it's dinner with friends or marathon training or being on time for the soccer game.

The children of mothers who have hypertension during pregnancy score lower on IQ tests 20 and 68 years after birth, according to a new study. The report, published Wednesday in the journal Neurology, is the first to draw a connection between high blood pressure during pregnancy and adult intelligence. Hypertension during pregnancy has been linked to premature birth and small body size, which in turn have been connected to deficits in cognitive abilities. But hypertension itself had yet to be connected directly to intelligence, a gap this study attempts to fill in. The research, conducted in Finland, used data collected as part of a survey called the Helsinki Birth Cohort.

Last week, Republicans adopted a platform that argued in favor of limiting marriage and requiring at least some women to pay more for birth control. This week, Democrats are reminding viewers over and over that they support expanding marriage to gays and lesbians and making all manner of contraception freely available. Against that backdrop, the conservative Heritage Foundation released a report Wednesday highlighting the rapid increase in out-of-wedlock births and the high incidence of poverty among children being raised by single mothers.