Women's Views on News

Are older Indian women putting their lives at risk because of the stigma of infertility?

In India, change.org reports that more and more older women are fighting the stigma of infertility and seeking out in vitro fertilisation.

The fact that fertility treatments are not regulated in India may have some bearing on this expanding market, added to which it is significantly cheaper than similar treatments in the US. No surprise then that the other major client group (apart from older Indian women) are wealthy Americans. 

But the treatment is not without its complications. Older mothers can face earlier death due to pregnancy complications and the Daily Mail reported earlier this year that Rajo Devi Lohan, who became the world's oldest mother at 70, is dying just 18 months after giving birth because she is too weak to recover from the IVF treatment. 

The issue begs a number of important questions, none of them easy to answer and many of them fraught with value judgements, not least whether older women in India are putting their own lives at risk to fight a stigma that is, in itself, gender-based. Whatever we think, however, the technology exists and will continue to be used. 

Filipino girl is not chess champion Bobby Fischer's daughter

A DNA test has determined that the late chess champion Bobby Fischer is not the father of a nine-year-old Filipino girl, BBC news reports. 

The Supreme Court in Reykjavik had ordered Mr Fischer's body exhumed to prove whether Jinky Young was Mr Fischer's daughter.

However, lawyer Thordur Bogason said the report "excluded Bobby Fisher".

The US-born chess player died in Iceland in 2008 but left no will. His estate is estimated at $2m (£1.4m).

"The DNA report excluded Bobby Fisher from being the father of Jinky Young, and therefore the case has come to a close," said Mr Bogason.

Specially trained health visitors can help reduce post-natal depression

Women who are given psychological support by specially trained health visitors are less likely to develop post-natal depression, says a report.

The findings come from a study carried out by the universities of Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield, of more than 2,000 women following childbirth.

Health visitors were trained in assessing mental health problems and giving psychological support.

The women in the study came from 101 primary care teams in the Trent area of England and were monitored for 18 months.

Nearly 1,500 of the women received the support from the newly trained health visitors and 767 women received normal care from a health visitor. None showed any signs of depression six weeks after childbirth when the study began.

The government says it is committed to increasing health visitor numbers, but try telling that to health visitors whose experience is rather different. 

Read the full report on the BBC news website. 

Philippine women call for legal right to abortion

Following on from our previous coverage of this story, women's groups in the Philippines are calling on their government to end the ban on abortion, reports Channel NewsAsia.

More than half a million Filipino women undergo illegal abortions every year. Of these, an estimated 90,000 women suffer complications with about 1,000 dying eventually.

"The criminalisation of abortion has not prevented the procedure, but made it unsafe. In all cases, the ban leads to one frightening direction - that of painful risky and potentially fatal methods of pregnancy termination," Centre for Reproductive Rights Melissa Upreti said.

Regardless of anyone's personal feeling on the rights or wrongs of abortion itself, the importance of making abortion available to women is reflected most powerfully in this story, which highlights the damage to women that preventing access causes, through backstreet abortions or dangerous attempts for women to self-abort their pregnancies. Although women's rights to choose abortion can be limited or restricted through tight regulation and outright bans of abortion, there are no legal sanctions that will prevent a women from exercising the right to control her body, herself.

Woman was UK's first fatal car accident victim

Almost 4,000 people are killed on the world's roads every day, according to the campaigning charity RoadPeace which is marking National Road Victim Month. So who was the UK's first fatal car accident victim - exactly 114 years ago - and what happened?

There was little more than a handful of petrol cars in Britain when labourer's wife Bridget Driscoll, 44, took a trip to the Crystal Palace, south-east London, on 17 August 1896.

So she could be forgiven for being bewildered by Arthur Edsall's imported Roger-Benz which was part of a motoring exhibition taking place as she attended a Catholic League of the Cross fete with her 16-year-old daughter, May, and a friend.

But as the Times recalled 70 years later, when giving mention to a memorial service for Mrs Driscoll at her local church, hers was the misfortune of becoming the UK's first traffic fatality, the BBC reports. 

Use of sunbeds is bad for eyesight

Sunbed-lovers are risking their eyesight by failing to wear protective goggles or shades, experts have warned.

UV damage caused by bright sunbed lamps can cause long-term problems and growths in the eyes, according to the College of Optometrists. Merely closing the eyes while on the sunbed does not offer full protection. Because the skin is so thin, it is at risk of burning.

The College recommends people wear the goggles or "winkies" provided by tanning salons. Dr Susan Blakeney, optometric adviser to the College, said: 'The skin on the eyelid is very thin and delicate so it's vital to protect this area from UV rays.

'Whilst we do not advocate the use of sunbeds, if you do use them it is important to ensure that you always use protective eye wear - as you would wear sunglasses when outside - to safeguard your eyes from UV rays.

'Avoiding wearing goggles or 'winkies' whilst using a sunbed can lead to benign eye growths called pterygium.'

Frankly I've never been near a sunbed in my life, but plenty of women swear by them unfortunately. Hopefully they'll take note of this advice in the Daily Mail (a combination of words that I'd never thought I'd use). 

The chocolate diet for women, but stay off the beer and beef

The Guardian suggests that a woman's love for dark chocolate may one day save her life.Ok, they don't actually say that, but that's what I'm hearing. Recent research finds that a moderate amount of dark chocolate (I'm thinking that's three bars of Green and Black and half a Bournville thrown in for good measure) may reduce the risk of heart failure in women aged between 48-83 years.

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail puts a dampener on our gendered sense of wellbeing (no change there, then) by telling us that women who eat too much red meat are at increased risk of heart disease. I feel fairly good about this one as I'm a vegetarian, but for those of you who aren't, I'd definitely avoid popping into McDonalds with your Thornton's goodie bag, then.

Even worse for us lady lager lovers (sorry, I've got a thing about alliteration), the BBC reports that too much beer can cause psoriasis (itchy, sore and flaky skin) in women. For those of us running a tab at our locals, I'd recommend an extra portion of dark chocolate to make up for this devastating news.

HIV-positive German girl band singer admits to having unprotected sex

Reuters reports that a German pop singer, Nadja Benaissa, from German girl band No Angels has confessed to having unprotected sex with three men after finding out she had HIV. 

She has been charged with causing grievous bodily harm in one instance and attempted grievous bodily harm on four other occasions when she had sex with the men between 2000 and 2004. 

One of her partners later contracted AIDS, while the other two were not infected with HIV. According to state prosecutors, Benaissa became aware she was HIV positive in 1999. 

"I'm sorry from the bottom of my heart" she was quoted as saying by German weekly magazine Stern. "The last thing I wanted was for my partners to get infected". 

I know it's easy to stand in judgement but having unprotected sex when you know you're HIV positive is foolhardy in the extreme. 

Prolonged hormone therapy may increase cancer risk

Using postmenopausal hormone therapy for more than 15 years increases a woman's risk of developing breast cancer, particularly among leaner women according to research at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California.

The research, conducted by a team including Tanmai Saxena, an MD and PhD student at the Keck School, has been published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, an American Association for Cancer Research journal.

The research revealed that women who have used postmenopausal hormone therapy for more than 15 years are at an added 19 per cent risk as compared to women who have never used it. The risk was an added 83 per cent for women who used combined therapy with estrogen plus progestin for 15 or more years. 

The research also found other variable factors affecting development of cancer in women on prolonged hormone therapy, such as the woman's BMI. Thinner women, as reported by Health News Track, appear to be on a higher risk.

Dr Saxena advises: "There needs to be a personalized conversation with women about the risks of using postmenopausal hormone therapy."

Doctors accuse women of putting their baby at risk by opting for a home birth

The UK's Royal College of Midwives has today criticised doctors for downplaying the benefits of home births, following claims by US academics last month that babies born at home are three times more likely to die than if born in hospital. 

Commenting on the research, the medical journal, the Lancet, wrote a hugely emotive editorial saying that "women have the right to choose how and where to give birth, but they do not have the right to put their baby at risk". 

In an interview with the Guardian, Cathy Warwick, the general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives, described the Lancet editorial as "sweeping and misoynistic". 

She said midwives now "feel there is a concerted and calculated global attack and backlash against home birth which is being unfairly pilloried by some sectors of the global medical maternity establishment.

"There is a danger that risk during childbirth is presented in a way which is leading women to believe that hospital birth equals a safe birth. It does not. There is no hard and fast guarantee that a woman will have a safer birth in a hospital than at home".

As a mother who wanted a home birth but ended up in hospital, I am outraged by the Lancet editorial. Both have advantages and disadvantages but to say that women are putting their babies at risk by opting to give birth in the stress-free environment of their own home is clearly fallacious. The editor should apologise for framing the debate in such emotive terms.