LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY jargon_john)

Forever Pregnant
Guidelines: Treat Nearly All Women as Pre-Pregnant

New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon.

Among other things, this means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control.

While most of these recommendations are well known to women who are pregnant or seeking to get pregnant, experts say it's important that women follow this advice throughout their reproductive lives, because about half of pregnancies are unplanned and so much damage can be done to a fetus between conception and the time the pregnancy is confirmed.

Original post and more sources here.

This shocked me, considering I'm on the second last chapter of The Handmaid's Tale. Excellent book, by the way. Margaret Atwood was onto something, really.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY dulcinbradbury)

I did not see this in the previous posting about the federal guidelines for women's health.

This LJ post discusses a women's dispute with her neurologist: "My neurologist does not trust me to not get pregnant. My neurologist puts a potential fetus's potential health over my health." It gives a rather chilling depiction of what we could (and in some cases do) face when the potential child is valued more highly than the living woman.

Secondly, through a couple links from the original post, I found that you can get to the original CDC recommendations.

Edited to fix code error.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

For those of you here with a more than passing interest in Texas politics and the Religious Right's influence in said state, here's an interesting report from the Texas Freedom Network:

State of the Religious Right

This is a PDF file. You'll need Adobe Reader to read it. It's worth the time.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY keith_dragon) From the Front Lines in Atlanta, Georgia:

We still have a long way to go for equal rights, but at least, there is some resistence cropping up to the Dominionist goals.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-17-gay-marriage_x.htm?csp=34

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY keith_dragon) Story:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12835020/

Here's another line drawn in the sand between freedom and dominionism.

I found this particularly interesting because it focuses on what is defined as family. Yet, I wonder if the city would enforce a Common Law marriage if the man decided to leave.