Belly Tales

Always good for a laugh (or, at the very least, a derisive snort), leave it to The Onion to break the latest news of the new anti-abortion pill that terminates the mother, but leaves the fetus alive.

DONE!!!!

I’m done with the semester!!!!!!

Done! Done! Done!!!!

Omg, off to go party. Byeeee.

Better late than never: check out this article from the New York Times magazine last weekend, which featured a long, in-depth look at the growing anti-contraception movement in America. A few highlights includes a detailed description of the entire Plan B over-the-counter approval-process debacle which happened last year, culminating in the resignation of Susan Woods, then director of the FDA’s Office of Women’s Health…and we’re still waiting for a response from Lester Crawford, acting Commissioner of the FDA, aren’t we? We may be waiting for quite some time. At least “Senators Hillary Clinton and Patty Murray are holding up the nomination of Andrew von Eschenbach as F.D.A. commissioner until the F.D.A. issues a verdict on the drug.” Go go Senator Clinton!

Oh, and this is very interesting:

One thing that happened, which Dr. Wood and many others may have failed to notice, was the change in conservative circles on the subject of contraception. At a White House press briefing in May of last year, three months before the F.D.A.’s nonruling on Plan B, Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked four times by a WorldNetDaily correspondent, Les Kinsolving, if the president supported contraception. “I think the president’s views are very clear when it comes to building a culture of life,” McClellan replied. Kinsolving said, “If they were clear, I wouldn’t have asked.” McClellan replied: “And if you want to ask those questions, that’s fine. I’m just not going to dignify them with a response.” This exchange caught the attention of bloggers and others. In July, a group of Democrats in Congress, led by Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York, sent the first of four letters to the president asking outright: “Mr. President, do you support the right to use contraception?” According to Representative Maloney’s office, the White House has still not responded.

Apparently the White House can’t give a straight answer to what should be a very straightforward question. Three cheers Congresswoman Maloney for asking the question repeatedly in the first place, though (in fact, Congresswoman Maloney a deserves an entire post of her own just to list all of the amazing work she’s done on behalf of women, children and women’s rights).

A few other chilling highlights:

In addition to providing an information center for the abstinence industry that has blossomed in recent years, [Leslee Unruh] takes her message directly to kids. Besides “Girls Gone Mild,” she sponsors “Purity Balls,” which fathers attend with their teenage daughters. “We think the relationship between fathers and their daughters is the key,” she told me. At the purity ball, a father gives a “purity ring” to his daughter — a symbol of the promise she makes to maintain her virginity for her future husband. Then, during her marriage ceremony, the daughter gives the ring to her new husband. Abstinence Clearinghouse’s Web site advertises the purity ball as an event “which celebrates your ‘little girl’ and her gift of sexual purity.

Better yet, check out Feministing’s take on the subject: Daddy’s little hymen.

Women’s Health News also had a very astute break down of the entire article, which is well worth reading.

As the 2007 federal guidelines for program financing state, “It is required that the abstinence education curriculum teaches that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity.”

I can’t even touch that, it leaves me so angry.

Happy International Midwifery Day!. Midwives all around the world are celebrating and being recognized for the hard work and vital role they play in the community. According to the International Confederation of Midwifery and the United Nations Population Fund, “urgent action [needs to be taken] to address the shortage of midwives if the world is to acheive the international development goals of improving maternal health and reducing child death. The World Health Organization estimates that at least 700,000 more midwives are needed to curb maternal death and illness”

That’s a lot of midwives. So, if you were ever thinking of becoming a midwife, now would be the time (although the real challenge seems to be teaching and promoting midwifery and midwifery skills in the Third World). For what it’s worth, here in New York several of us woke up at the crack of dawn and went to stand outside the studios of the Today Show and The Early Show with matching t-shirts and banners and signs, and raised some noise about International Midwifery Day! Wooo! And a few of us even ended up on TV (though mostly the ones at the Early Show, but if you were watching this morning, I’m sure you could have caught a glimpse of smiling midwives in bright turquoise as the camera panned through the crowd). It was fun. Though very early.

And now, to break the monotany of constant studying, I’m off to meet Melissa from A Womb of Her Own, who just so happens to be visiting New York City this weekend from her hometown of Toronto. Forging international bonds of friendship between student midwives on International Midwifery day, no less—go us!

Interesting article in the New York times on new therapies for menopause, including anti-depressants, anti-hypertensives, and anti-seizure drugs. While these drugs seem to show some promise when it comes to helping hot flashes, none of them come close to hormones. How frustrating! What are we supposed to offer to women to help them? Especially when hormone therapy has fallen out of such favor that even though most women could probably take a short course of hormones to help with the hot flashes during the worst of it, very few of them want hormones in the first place now. (Not that I’m pushing hormones, but during the most accute phase of the menopausal transition, hormones for a few months, or even a year or two, might make an enormous difference in a woman’s quality of life).

I’ve put this on my reading list for the summer. It was recommended by the professor who lectured us on menopause, and I definitely need to learn more about menopause. Thank goodness summer reading is almost here!! But ughhh, still three exams, one final research project and one take-home exam to go.

Have definitely gotten to the point tonight that nothing is sinking in anymore. I feel like I’m a sponge full of water, and if you add more water to my oversoaked brain right now, water is just going to end up spilling out of it. Our first exam is tomorrow (well-woman gynecology). I feel woefully underprepared, but maybe that’s because the topics are so overwhelming: abnormal uterine bleeding, amenorrhea, chronic pelvic pain, infertility…any one of these things could be caused by so many different things, and requires such extensive work ups that really…I just have no clue. And the answer can’t be to refer to a physician all the time, but honestly…it’s all just a bit too overwhelming. My eyes keep glazing over. If I don’t know it by now, there’s no way I’m going to be able to learn it tonight. I guess that means it’s time for bed.

Just a quick note to say that the spam track-backs on this website have become a bit unbearable lately. I’ve increased the security on the comments so that no comment can be posted without first being approved, so if you comment and it doesn’t appear immediately, don’t worry—it’s just because I haven’t gotten around to approving it yet. This is in no way a judgement on any of the comments—I promise I’ll approve every comment I get, even if I don’t agree with it. It’s just…I’m sick of comments advertising cell phones, travel packages, or xxx this or that, which need to be erased and moderated at least three or four times a day. It’s becoming a full-time job, and one I just don’t have time for atm. So, my apologies if the new policy on comments is upsetting to anyone. It’s not my intention to deter user comments in any way whatsoever, I just want tto make sure they’re real comments, that’s all!

My friend and I spent a fair chunk of time this morning going over the management of abnormal pap smears. How ironic, then, to come home and turn on my computer and find this story on the BBC website about the high levels of anxiety women feel when they’re told they have an abnormal pap result—especially when (as the study rightly points out) SO very few abnormal paps are actually cancerous! Thanks to Dr. Papanicalou, cervical “cancer” is almost always caught and treated while it’s still in the pre-cancerous stage, i.e. not actually cancer at all. Yet so few women in the clinic where I’ve been working even know what the pap test is for—they generally know that they need one every year, and they dutifully come in for their annual, but they’re not always entirely sure what it’s testing. I wonder how often their pap results are carefully explained to them. I guess research like this is a good reminder to make sure that the women you’re taking care of fully understand what the results mean, so that they don’t go home terrified that they have cancer when all they have is ASCUS (atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance, which isn’t even a pre-cancerous lesion, and which will most likely spontaneously resolve on its own, since only 0.1% - 0.2% of all women with ASCUS actually have cervical cancer….i.e., one to two women out of thousand!!) I haven’t had to break the news of an abnormal pap result to a woman yet, but all of this is duly noted.