Saturday News Roundup

The short stack:
From CNN: 7 Kids' Health Myths Every Mom Should Ignore

Chewable Birth Control. I'm puzzled as to why minty fresh and chewable pills are necessary. Then again, I've never understood why people insist they can't swallow pills, when they generally swallow blobs of food larger than your average pill every day. Why don't you just go ahead and make a Pez dispenser full of birth control?

From Radiology Picture of the Day, and found via Kevin, MD, you'll poke your eye out. Also found via KMD, "Wife Sues Estranged Husband Over STD."

From the National Institutes of Health, "Hormonal Contraception Does Not Appear To Increase HIV Risk."

Newsweek: On pro-anorexia websites, "Proponents say they offer 'support,' but a Stanford University study finds that patients who visited pro-anorexia Web sites were sicker longer."

New England Journal of Medicine editorial, "The Ethics and Politics of Compulsory HPV Vaccination."

From the FDA, "What Every Consumer Should Know About Trans Fatty Acid" [July 2003]

E. Coli infection information from the National Library of Medicine

New York Times article on false pregnancy

Fetal pain bill fails in the House. [View votes]

Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Modernization Act of 2006 has passed in the Senate and House.

Underweight women more likely to miscarry. You may have seen this in other places, but weight was not the only factor. According to the piece in BJOG, "the following were independently associated with increased risk: high maternal age; previous miscarriage, termination and infertility; assisted conception; low pre-pregnancy body mass index; regular or high alcohol consumption; feeling stressed (including trend with number of stressful or traumatic events); high paternal age and changing partner."

Belly Tales has a Selected Bibliography on Birth Centers, Cesarean Rate Rises and VBAC Rate Declines, and The Out-of-Hospital Birth Debate Continues. All well worth a look, with links to additional resources.

Via Feministing, White House subpoenaed over Plan B delay, "The Office on Violence Against Women gets a new (scary) director," and the Washington Post's article, "Abortion Pill Thwarts Breast Cancer Gene.

Via the Kaiser Network:

One in 1,000 Women Hospitalized for Mental Illness After Delivering First Infant, Study Says

New York City C-Section Delivery Rate Up; City Hospitals Not Complying With State Maternity Information Act, Report Says

Study Put Pregnant Women at Risk by Giving Them Placebo Rather Than Alternative Herpes Drug, Advocacy Group Says

Wall Street Journal Examines 'Period Management' Options, Benefits, Risks

New Hampshire To Offer Gardasil to Girls at No Cost Under State Immunization Program

Who wants to buy me a present? :)

RHRealityCheck has an interesting piece, Unsafe Abortion as Human Rights Abuse.

The meat:
The CDC issued preliminary 2003 U.S. abortion surveillance data. From the results:

"A total of 848,163 legal induced abortions were reported to CDC for 2003 from 49 reporting areas, representing a 0.7% decline from the 854,122 legal induced abortions reported by 49 reporting areas for 2002."

"The abortion ratio, defined as the number of abortions per 1,000 live births, was 241 in 2003, a decrease from the 246 in 2002."

"The abortion rate was 16 per 1,000 women aged 15--44 years for 2003, the same as for 2002."

"During 2001--2002 (the most recent years for which data are available), 15 women died as a result of complications from known legal induced abortion. One death was associated with known illegal abortion."

"The highest percentages of reported abortions were for women who were unmarried (82%), white (55%), and aged <25 years (51%)."

"Of all abortions for which gestational age was reported, 61% were performed at <8 weeks' gestation and 88% at <13 weeks. From 1992 (when detailed data regarding early abortions were first collected) through 2002, steady increases have occurred in the percentage of abortions performed at <6 weeks' gestation, with a slight decline in 2003."

The CDC also reports that teen births have dropped to their lowest level ever. From the press release:

"...between 2004 and 2005, the birth rate for teenagers aged 15-19 fell 2 percent, to 40.4 births per 1,000 - a 35 percent decrease from the peak of 61.8 births per 1,000 in 1991"

"There was another increase in unmarried childbearing in 2005. The number of births to unmarried mothers of all ages rose 4 percent from 1.47 million in 2004 to 1.52 million in 2005; while the rate increased to 47.6 births per 1,000 unmarried females aged 15-44 in 2005, up from 46.1 in 2004. The percentage of births to unmarried mothers also increased in 2005, from 35.8 to 36.8 percent."

"Childbearing by women in their early 20s increased slightly in 2005, and also continued to increase among women in their 30s and 40s. Birth rates for women aged 20-24 and 30-34 rose less than 1 percent between 2004 and 2005, while rates for women aged 35-44 years rose by 2 percent."

"The Caesarean delivery rate rose 4 percent in 2005 to 30.2 percent of all births, a record high. The C-section rate has risen 46 percent since 1996."