Ruth Institute Blog

by Elard Koch

What makes these two countries so similar in matters of maternal health and abortion?

What makes Chile and Ireland similar countries in matters of maternal health and abortion? In September 2012 I had the invaluable opportunity to participate as a member of the Committee on Excellence in Maternal Healthcare, convened in Dublin to analyze the experience of Ireland, Chile, and other countries with a high standard in maternal health around the world. The meeting was crowned with the Declaration of Dublin. Read more…

by Carolyn Moynihan

Re-posted from the latest Family In America newsletter:

A recent survey hosted by ForbesWoman and TheBump.com attempts to capture how American women feel about the economy and working outside the home. It found that working moms are, in general, “an unhappy lot,” further supporting the fact that men and women are not interchangeable cogs in the employment and domestic worlds. Read more…

by Carolyn Moynihan

Business Insider presents quotesfrom 22 executives admitting the biggest mistakes they have ever made. This one is from Carol Bartz, former president and CEO of Yahoo:

“I’ve made a lot of mistakes. There isn’t one that stands out. I make mistakes every week, every month, every year.

“I would say. . . I actually wish I had started having children younger. I was 40 when I had my daughter. And I wish I would have started that younger so I could have had more children.” Read more…

by Dr. Rebecca Peck

Pennsylvania State Rep. Babette Josephs, a Philadelphia Democrat, recently attacked her pro-life women colleagues in the state legislature for supporting a bill that would allow women a chance to see an ultrasound of their unborn child before an abortion, calling them “men with breasts.” But who are the real “men with breasts,” Dr. Rebecca Peck asks. Read more…

by Abby Johnson | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 11/28/11 11:08 AM

Since becoming pregnant, I have learned a hard reality. I have private insurance because I am self employed. I knew that my insurance plan did not offer maternity coverage. Read more…

From NPR. Click to listen.

Some scientists have proposed that when a woman has a baby, she gets not just a son or a daughter, but a gift of cells that stays behind and protects her for the rest of her life. That’s because a baby’s cells linger in its mom’s body for decades and — like stem cells — may help to repair damage when she gets sick. It’s such an enticing idea that even the scientists who came up with the idea worry that it may be too beautiful to be true.

Found here.

An urban high school teacher in Connecticut talks about unwed motherhood, fatherlessness, and how it affects the kids in his classroom.

by Gerry Garibaldi

…Here’s my prediction: the money, the reforms, the gleaming porcelain, the hopeful rhetoric about saving our children—all of it will have a limited impact, at best, on most city schoolchildren. Urban teachers face an intractable problem, one that we cannot spend or even teach our way out of: teen pregnancy. This year, all of my favorite girls are pregnant, four in all, future unwed mothers every one. There will be no innovation in this quarter, no race to the top. Personal moral accountability is the electrified rail that no politician wants to touch… Read more…

by Erika Bachiochi

Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Vol. 34, No. 3, Summer 2011

Abstract:

Within legal academic circles and the general pro-choice feminist population, it is axiomatic that women’s equality requires abortion. Indeed, pro-choice legal scholars, foremost among them Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have argued that the Equal Protection Clause provides a far more appealing constitutional justification for the abortion right than the roundly criticized right to privacy offered in Roe. Read more…

Marcia Segelstein – OneNewsNow Columnist -

Authors Suzanne Venker and Phyllis Schlafly, in their new book, The Flipside of Feminism, have courageously laid bare the false premises — and promises — of “the women’s movement.”  And they have mercilessly quantified, to the extent possible, the negative effects that the feminist movement has had on American culture. Read more…

Yesterday there was a segment on NPR titled Taming The Twin Trend From Fertility Treatments. They talked about how various forms of ART have caused an increase in the incidence of twin pregnancies:

Twins, once a rarity to marvel over, are now a common part of American culture, thanks in large part to increased use of reproductive technology. Twins are conceived naturally just 2 percent of the time; for those who get pregnant with fertility treatments the rate is more than 40 percent.

They also discussed some of the health risks associated with twins: Read more…