MSNBC recently ran an article delving into the unique area of infertility among American couples and the psychological trauma that can be associated with infertility. The article discussed how infertility has affected a few couples specifically, and the general facts about infertility:

One in eight American couples will experience infertility, and 1.1 million women will undergo treatment this year. That most won’t talk about it makes it that much more painful: A recent survey of infertility patients reveals that 61 percent hide the struggle to get pregnant from friends and family. More than half of the patients included in the survey, conducted by pharmaceutical giant Schering-Plough, reported that it was easier to tell people they didn’t intend to build a family rather than share their troubles.

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Many celebrities have taken their own struggles with issues ranging from drug abuse (Betty Ford) to domestic violence (Eminem) and used them as an avenue to bring social problems into the forefront.

Teenage pregnancy is a very real concern, and it’s a dicey subject for a celeb to focus on. I get the feeling that Bristol Palin would dearly love to be the “spokesceleb” on this subject judging by her work for the Candie’s Foundation, her role on The Secret Life of the American Teenager, and statements she’s made to the media.

However, there’s actually a more legit celebrity who has shown true class in this very complex situation, keeping a low profile as she’s raised her daughter in a small southern town without glamorizing her situation. Instead, she has shown grace under pressure as she walked away from a blossoming career and made the child she gave birth to when she could have been out partying—or cashing in on her celebucause—her true focus.

Jamie Lynn Spears is walking the walk, not just talking the talk.

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One of Britain’s leading abortion providers has come under fire this week for offering free terminations to its staff. Marie Stopes International offers employees, their partners and children free access to terminations as part of its employee benefits package, which also includes discounted gym membership, free annual health checks and a range of leisure deals and offers.

The company’s policy on staff access to terminations has this week caused outrage among anti-abortion groups in the UK, which have branded the benefit as ‘macabre.’ According to the Marie Stopes’ website:

‘Team members, their partners and dependents will be able to access Marie Stopes International’s core services… without charge.’

Under ‘core services,’ the company lists services such as sterilisation, testing for HIV and other sexual transmitted infections, ultrasounds, family planning and abortion.

Marie Stopes International operates on a not-for-profit basis, but is given an estimated £30 million a year from the NHS to carry out abortions – though the NHS offers free abortions (subject to strict law which states that women must obtain the consent of two doctors before being allowed the procedure), Marie Stopes carries these out on behalf of the NHS in some cases. The organisation also offers private abortions for women who prefer to pay privately to terminate as quickly as possible.

Josephine Quintavalle, of the UK’s Pro-Life Alliance, has said that:

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The clothing company Forever 21 just launched a new line of clothing for pregnant women. This is causing a bit of a stir with some people for a few reasons. Forever 21 is a store whose demographic largely consists of a younger, generally teenaged crowd. Opponents, being careful to specify that it’s not that pregnant women should be unfashionable, are arguing rather that the company is glamorizing teen pregnancy. A CNN reporter asked the Executive VP Larry Meyer about if they were encouraging teen pregnancy. He responded by saying, “Well, quite honestly, people and analysts try to put us into that teen world, but this company has been around for 26 years now, and we’ve always had a very wide customer base.” Hmm. Based exclusively and admittedly limitedly on my own anecdotal observations, that sounds kind of like bullshit.

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Blogger Cassy Fiano has your number, radical feminists. She knows you for what you are — baby killers who hate men and America, too.

Did you all know that you’re the luckiest women in the world? Because you are. But you’re ungrateful. And why? Because of evil fascist feminists who try to convince you that you need abortions on demand. They convince you that you’re subject to an “invisible patriarchy” and that we really don’t need men to function. Madness, I say! And fascist feminists won’t rest until we’re all murderous sluts!

Let’s go down Fiano’s list, shall we?

8. Encouraging Promiscuity

Once upon a time, men had to earn sex with a woman.

I assume Cassy has never seen Mad Men. Or read a book. This magical, wonderful time when all men were gentlemen and all women ladies were ladies never existed. Sorry.

Cassy essentially argues that the ready availability of contraceptives has made women loose and that fascist feminists believe promiscuity equals empowerment. Cassy believes feminists argue that abstinence and purity was for your grandparent’s generation and now it’s unhip. Yes, because abstinence-only education has worked so well.

7. Sanctioning Victimhood

Feminists are constantly trying to tell women that they are victims of the patriarchy:

If a woman loses to a man in an election, it’s because she’s a girl. If a woman doesn’t get a promotion, it’s the patriarchy trying to keep her down. If a man winks at a woman on the street, he’s just trying to keep her in her place. If a woman gets accidentally pregnant, her life is forever ruined and her only option is to get an abortion.

In fact — wait for it — it’s the feminists that are keeping women down! It’s natural for a man to look at a woman’s boobs, silly!

Now I agree with her — to a point. Constantly wallowing in victim-hood isn’t good for anyone and it doesn’t get anything accomplished. But there’s a difference between crying the blues for nothing and pointing out genuinely sexist behaviors. It may be natural for a man to want to look at a woman’s breasts, but it’s still unprofessional in, say, a work setting.

6. Dabbling In Misandry

Fascist feminists hate men because …

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The Institute for Neonatology in Belgrade has opened up a brand-new human breast milk bank – a first for Serbia and the Balkans. The facility aims to provide milk for premature newborns hospitalized at the Institute, and to boost rates of breastfeeding in a county where very few mothers take it up.

Slavica Simic, head of the ‘bank,’ has also stated the intention to expand the facility, stating that:

‘Our goal is to extend the bank in order to be able to feed all prematurely born children, as well as to offer milk to maternity hospitals, surgery departments and even out-of-hospital mothers who cannot breastfeed their babies due to health problems.’

The bank has so far collected some 2,300 litres of breast milk, which makes up around one third of the overall needed for the Institute for Neonatology alone. Presently, the milk bank’s donors are mostly mothers whose babies are in hospital and have a surplus of breast milk. But the new milk bank faces an uphill struggle to recruit donors as Serbia has very low levels of breastfeeding – a source of continual dismay to medical experts and parenting organizations in the country.

The level of breastfeeding is low overall in Southeastern Europe, with an average of only 27% of children being exclusively breastfed in their first six months, according to UNICEF figures – this figure ranks amongst the lowest in the world. But in Serbia itself the rates are even lower, with only 15% of mothers exclusively breastfeeding their babies …

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The constraining of pregnant prisoners during labour and delivery is a practice so hidden that few people know it exists – but a number of lawsuits relating to this have made the national media in the US recently, and these have ignited debate over the practice, both in relation to human rights and regarding whether the convention is constitutional.

This isn’t something I was aware occurred (indeed, it sounds more like something out of Dickens novel), but the practice is reportedly ever-present and widespread in contemporary America. Last month, the American Medical Association’s House of Delegates condemned the shackling of pregnant inmates and advocated the writing of model statutes to serve as templates for states that have yet to restrict the practice.  However, currently only ten states actually have anti-shackling laws and, in most states, incarcerated women have their legs shackled, stomachs chained and wrists cuffed when being transported from prison to hospital for delivery, and reportedly often, despite the …

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Now, I have never been pregnant myself, so go ahead and take this with a grain of salt, but I feel like there are a WHOLE LOT of rules and advisories for women who are pregnant. Britain’s NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence), an organization that apparently is good for something else besides the world’s most adorable acronym, has added to list of things to worry about when pregnant.

They recently provided guidelines for women who are obese and either are pregnant or are thinking about pregnancy in response to the large proportion of women of childbearing age who overweight or categorically obese. The BBC reports their main statements:

If a woman is obese during pregnancy, she has an increased risk of developing serious complications like pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, miscarriage and stillbirth. She is also more likely to have a Caesarean section. NICE says women with a body mass index of more than 30 should be encouraged to lose weight before they become pregnant. During pregnancy, losing weight can be harmful to the unborn child, so women are advised to eat healthily and to do gentle exercise.

None of that was terribly surprising, but …

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The children of politicians should be off-limits. But it’s very hard to respect that policy when the politician is the one serving up their children to the media on a regular basis for the sake of money and votes morality and family values.

After weeks of speculation, Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston shocked the world — and, allegedly, their families — when they announced their surprise engagement in supermarket tabloid Us Weekly. Standing next to the man she loves (who continually bashed her Mother and posed for nudie photos for some cash), carrying her adorable love child, a timid Bristol wonders aloud on the front cover if her mother will be able to accept this marriage. The pair wear white and their hands almost touch while they hold their infant child and smile bravely to a cruel, judgmental world.

But honestly, does anyone believe that Bristol and Levi got engaged without Mama Grizzly’s consent? In fact, I find it hard to believe that Hockey Mama Grizzly didn’t set up this photo op herself, especially given that only a week ago Levi Johnston announced to the world that he has personally apologized to Sarah and Todd Palin for the comments he has made about the Palin family in the press.

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Pregnant women in China are striving to give their newborn babies a great gift—U.S. citizenship. At a cost of well over $10,000, women like Wang Rong from Beijing feel that the necessary financial sacrifice is well worth the benefits their babies will ultimately reap.

From China Daily:

The expenditure will cover all costs, including services before departure, medical care in the US and a three-month stay there, thanks to the help of a Shanghai-based agency that specializes in taking mainland moms to North America.

“Given the quality of educational resources and employment prospects in China, where there is a huge population and harsh competition, I want my baby to win at the starting line by obtaining US citizenship,” she said.

When I was fifteen or so, I went to the (assume a snobby voice here) the-a-tre in Boston with a bunch of friends to see Miss Saigon.  If you haven’t seen it, you really should because it’s freaking amazing I won’t ruin the storyline any more than saying that there is a Vietnamese woman, Kim, who conceives a baby with an American G.I. during the Vietnam War.  Kim wants desperately for her little boy to grow up American, and the lengths to which she’ll go—and the heartbreak she endures—are just gut-wrenching. [Ed. Note: Miss Saigon -- amazing.  GO.  NOW.]

I cry at the movies a lot (most recently with Toy Story 3 — oh my God, I had no idea that a Disney/Pixar flick could cut so deeply), but I have never experienced anything like the vicarious grief that poured out of a fifteen-year-old me at the Wang Center.  I almost didn’t mention Miss Saigon, by the way, since I don’t want anyone to think that I’m lumping Chinese and Vietnamese women together, but the visceral connection I’m feeling through writing on this topic makes it impossible to ignore.

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Endocrinologist Dr. Maria New is peddling the steroid dexamethasone to pregnant women as a means of keeping the genitalia of female babies from looking male. Apparently New is also experimenting with the drug’s “potential to prevent girls from developing same-sex attractions; ‘abnormal’ lack of interest in dolls, babies, and traditional mommy-ing; and ‘masculine’ career interests.” Damn, that’s a lot of pressure to put on one little pill … and a lot of idiocy in the research design behind it.

From Change.org:

Prenatal “dex” is used by Dr. New to prevent the development of androgynous or masculine-looking genitalia in girls with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH), which is caused by an overproduction of androgens. This is an already controversial practice and has raised ethics questions: as Time magazine discusses, dex carries significant unknown dangers and doesn’t address the underlying disorder, which can pose serious health problems in both boys and girls.

Yet Dr. New, instead of dialing back and worrying about the potential harm that she is doing, sees an opportunity to take that research further and find a way to make sure we only reproduce straight stay-at-home moms. She believes her research demonstrates a connection between excess production of androgens and girls who are queer or exhibit “masculine behavior” in “childhood play, peer association, career and leisure time preferences.” So Dr. Maria New is essentially saying that things like, oh I don’t know, wanting to be a scientist, are “abnormalities.”

Wow. I cannot believe that this is legal. So if someone’s daughter is into playing trucks, prefers to play with boys over girls, and wants to be a trash collector, we should start laying on the dex? Because, well, screwing around with physiological functions like androgen production to potentially change the entire make-up of a child makes so much sense.

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Fertility treatments have become increasingly available with breakthroughs in both medical technology and ingenuity in being able to pay.  With news that women in the UK over the age of 40 might receive free fertility treatments as a counter to potential accusations about age discrimination, though, the issue is about to get much more dicey.

From ParentDish:

The current age limit for IVF may be scrapped in favour of the trusts deciding on whether a women gets free IVF cycles bases on how many eggs they have left.

Critics have said that this could encourage women to have babies in middle age, which can put both mother and baby at considerable risk. For example, children of older mothers are more likely to be born with an abnormality, whilst older mothers are more likely to die in childbirth.

Um, yeah, why don’t we ask Rajo Devi Lohan how that worked out for her?

Comment on Reproductive Ethics’ Josephine Quintavalle is speaking out against this notion, referring to it as …

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