Search

An editorial is presented on the health consequences of Iran's ideological perspective on population growth. Topics include the human rights abuses following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the government's implementation and subsequent reversal of family planning programs, and the adverse impacts of the Rejuvenation of the Population and Protection of the Family law on reproductive health and women's rights.

The article explores outlook for surrogacy law reform in the U.S. through the possible expansion of the Title X Family Planning Program of the U.S. Public Health Service Act. Topics discussed include the need for the U.S. Office of Population Affairs (OPA) to consider conditional grants for surrogacy-focused clinics under the Title X Program, the legal consequences of inconsistent surrogacy laws, and brief details about the surrogacy laws in California, Connecticut, and Nevada.

In 2013, the 'Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Some Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening the Reform' initiated the 'selective two-child policy', which allowed married couples to have two children if one of the parents was a single child. In the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 2015, a decision was made to implement the policy that a couple can have two children; in 2016, the universal two-child policy was fully implemented. This study used female employment data disclosed by Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2020, constructed a two-way fixed-effect model of time and industry, and empirically tested the impact of the two-child policy on female employment and corporate performance. The empirical test revealed that the higher the proportion of employed female workers, the better the firm's performance. Expanding the scope of the two-child policy exhibited no reduction in the proportion of female employment, but weakened the positive effect of hiring female employees on corporate performance. Specifically, we found that firms with higher rates of female employment exhibit lower costs, and this low-cost effect disappears with the expansion of the scope of the second-child policy. This indicates that the economic benefits of female employment for firms result from wage discrimination. This study provides a theoretical and practical basis for safeguarding women's reproductive and fair employment rights and promoting sustainable social development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation of the Pre-conception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994 in a patriarchal country like India hasn't eliminated sex-selective abortions in the country. Studies have shown that there still exists a higher preference for sons in India even after India has achieved its 75 years of independence. Over the years there has been a drastic fall in the Total Fertility Rates of India both at the rural and urban levels too. This was accompanied by various inventions of sex determination techniques. All this resulted in a decline in the child sex ratio across India. China is a great example of a nation with alarming gender imbalances, which emerged due to similar changes in Total Fertility Rate, level of son preference and diagnostic techniques along with the implementation of the erstwhile One-Child Policy, which made the gender imbalance even worse. The population explosion in India has forced several state governments to even consider the implementation of a Two-Child Policy. Literature shows that the relationship between Sex-Selective Abortions (SSA) and Family Planning Policies is weak in India. Our objective in this paper is to check whether the stringent implementation of nationwide Family Planning Policies can lead to a rise in sex-selective abortions in India. Further, we would also analyse how in India by imposing a Family Planning Policy like a one or a two-child policy will the Child Sex Ratio (age 0-6) get affected? To achieve these objectives, we have used the NFHS-4 (2015-16) reports as our data sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the budget of the Indian family planning programme from a human rights perspective. Family planning services play an important role in the realisation of the reproductive rights of women. In India, the family planning programme is one of the largest in the world with thousands of patients, mostly women, accessing services every year. Although the Indian legal system guarantees the right to health, Indian women from marginalised sections of society still battle inadequate services and the absence of health care that respects their right to reproductive autonomy and choice. Therefore, the question is: in the presence of a strong legal framework, what are the factors that contribute to this phenomenon? Design/methodology/approach: The authors have gathered data from the project implementation plans at the state level comparing year-wise expenditure for family planning against overall expenditure for reproductive, maternal and child health expenditure. The data are then compared to the number of women using sterilisation to suggest a relationship between both. Finally, the article relies on desk research to review scholarship on the Indian family planning programme and applicable human rights obligations. Findings: The paper finds that social-economic rights such as the right to health are applicable to government spending and budgeting. It also finds current spending in the NHM is insufficient to guarantee women's reproductive rights as the vast majority of resources are spend on sterilisation, thus limiting women's ability to choose the number and spacing of children. Research limitations/implications: The data used in this research bears one limitation: the propensity of the government to change the guidelines as to how States should present their budgets in the project implementation plans. The authors have adjusted the data so that it remains comparable. However, the adjustment was not possible for all expenditure data, which is why the current study is limited to the family planning programme alone. Practical implications: The paper argues that to be human rights compliant, health budgets of the NHM need to be geared towards the specific needs of women in terms of family planning. Finally, the article briefly outlines the role played by human rights and human rights litigation in impacting government budgets. Originality/value: India's family planning programme has been examined from a performance and medical standpoint, focussing on medical indicators such as total fertility rate, unmet needs for family planning, amongst others. Academic scholarship has investigated through statistical analysis patterns of contraceptive use and contraceptive mix. What is absent, however, is an assessment of the programme from a right-based perspective by looking at the human rights obligations of India and their normative implications for the Indian family programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has relaxed its family planning policy to allow all married couples to have a second child. To ensure a smooth implementation of the new policy (second‐child policy), an efficient detection of public attitudes is necessary. However, traditional methods fail to meet the requirement. This paper aims to examine social media responses, and then uses of linguistic analysis methods to build computational models for automatic detection of attitudinal expressions in social media posts. In this study, a total of 17,305 Sina Weibo posts with keywords were collected and analyzed. First, a content analysis was performed on collected posts to determine whether each of them reflected positive, neutral, or negative attitudes. Second, a series of linguistic features were obtained from each post. Third, based on selected linguistic features, decision tree models were built for differentiating among posts indicating different types of attitudes (positive, neutral, and negative). Results showed that 22.30% of analyzed posts indicated negative attitudes. 62.88% of relevant posts reflected a negative desire for bearing a second child. "Cost and burden" was recognized as a major barrier to the birth of a second child (56.55%). The classification accuracy of decision tree models ranged from 71.6 to 74.4%. This paper supports the need for improving public attitudes towards the second‐child policy, and confirms that the use of linguistic analysis method can add to the validity of online detection of public attitudes towards significant social events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family planning providers anticipate positive changes to the Title X program as President Biden announced his administration would roll back the Trump rules that forced hundreds of family planning clinics out of the program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Essential Access Health and other family planning advocacy organizations petitioned the Supreme Court to review a Court of Appeals decision that upholds the Trump administration's Title X regulations and gag rule. Because of the changes, the number of Title X sites in California dropped from 366 to 238. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent Title X changes have proven devastating to women depending on family planning centers for their reproductive healthcare needs. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upheld the Trump administration's gag rule that prohibits Title X providers from referring patients for abortion care or even answering questions about abortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Sexual and reproductive health conditions (eg, infections, cancers) represent public health concerns for American women. The present study examined how knowledge of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) relates to receipt of preventive reproductive health services among women.Design: Cross-sectional online survey.Setting: Online questionnaires were completed via Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing website where individuals complete web-based tasks for compensation.Participants: Cisgendered women aged 18 to 44 years (N = 1083) from across the United States.Measures: Participants completed online questionnaires assessing demographics, insurance status, preventive service use, and knowledge of PPACA provisions.Analysis: Chi-squares showed that receipt of well-woman, pelvic, and breast examinations, as well as pap smears, was related to insurance coverage, with those not having coverage at all during the previous year having significantly lower rates of use. Hierarchical logistic regressions determined the independent relationship between PPACA knowledge and use of health services after controlling for demographic factors and insurance status.Results: Knowledge of PPACA provisions was associated with receiving well-woman, pelvic, and breast examinations, human papillomavirus vaccination, and sexually transmitted infections testing, after controlling for these factors. Results indicate that expanding knowledge about health-care legislation may be beneficial in increasing preventive reproductive health service use among women.Conclusion: Current findings provide support for increasing resources for outreach and education of the general population about the provisions and benefits of health-care legislation, as well as personal health coverage plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1935 and 1985, Irish law criminalized the sale and importation of condoms. Activists established illegal markets to challenge the law and alleviate its social consequences. They distributed condoms through postal services, shops, stalls, clinics, and machines. Though they largely operated in the open, their activities attracted little direct punishment from the state, and they were able to build a stable network of medical and commercial family planning services. We use 30 interviews conducted with former activists to explore this history. In doing so, we also examine the limits of 'illegality' in describing acts of everyday resistance to law, arguing that the boundaries between legal and illegal, in the discourses and practices of those who sought to challenge the state, were shifting and uncertain. In turn, we revisit 'illegality', characterizing it as an assemblage of varying selectively-performed political practices, shaped by complex choreographies of negotiation between state and non-state actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Young adults, including college students, have higher rates of chlamydia than the general population. Patient-delivered partner therapy (PDPT) is a partner treatment option for sex partners of individuals diagnosed with chlamydia or gonorrhea. We examined college health center use of PDPT in a national sample of colleges.Methods: During 2014 to 2015, we collected data from 482 colleges and universities (55% of 885 surveyed), weighting responses by institutional characteristics abstracted from a national database (eg, 2-year vs 4-year status). We asked whether the school had a student health center and which sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services were offered. We also assessed the legal and perceived legal status of PDPT in states where schools were located. We then estimated PDPT availability at student health centers and measured associations with legal status and SRH services.Results: Most colleges (n = 367) reported having a student health center; PDPT was available at 36.6% of health centers and associated with perceived legality of PDPT in the state in which the college was located (odds ratio [OR], 4.63; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.17-18.28). Patient-delivered partner therapy was significantly associated with availability of SRH services, including sexually transmitted disease diagnosis and treatment of STI (56.2% vs 1.1%), gynecological services (60.3% vs 12.2%), and contraceptive services (57.8% vs 7.7%) (all P < .001). Compared with schools taking no action, PDPT was more likely to be available at schools that notified partners directly (OR, 8.29; 95% CI, 1.28-53.85), but not schools that asked patients to notify partners (OR, 3.47; 95% CI, 0.97-12.43).Conclusions: PDPT was more likely to be available in colleges that offered SRH services and where staff believed PDPT was legal. Further research could explore more precise conditions under which PDPT is used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To analyze the initial effect following the relaxation of China's population control policy on the cesarean delivery (CD) rate using the 10-Group Classification System (TGCS).Methods: A retrospective study included all deliveries at a center in Nanjing, China, during 2014-2015. The deliveries were classified using the TGCS. The obstetric populations and the CD rates in each group were compared between 2014 and 2015.Results: Overall, 11 006 deliveries were analyzed. The overall CD rate increased from 28.3% (1623/5737) in 2014 to 33.8% (1782/5269) in 2015 (P<0.001). The largest contributor to the overall CD rate-accounting for approximately one-third of all CDs-were nulliparous women with a single cephalic term pregnancy and induced labor or prelabor CD (group 2); the CD rate in this group increased from 27.2% to 31.4%. Moreover, the proportion of women with a single cephalic term pregnancy with previous CD (group 5) steeply increased from 6.4% to 10.4% of all deliveries; the CD rate in this group during 2014-2015 was 76.6%.Conclusion: With China ending its one-child policy, the characteristics of the obstetric population changed. Women with a single cephalic term pregnancy with previous CD were the largest contributor to the CD rate increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the study that investigates the effectiveness of the family planning services, under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), in decreasing unintended pregnancy and abortions in the U.S. The topics discussed include the changes proposed by U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump on ACA by eliminating the safety net of family planning services and defunding the Planned Parenthood, the reduction of access to contraception, and the implications of the said changes on women.

At reproductive healthcare charity the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), midwives play an essential role in providing a high-quality service and upholding women's choices [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the importance of Title X as a part if the U.S. National Family Planning Program.

In October, 2015, China's one-child policy was replaced by a universal two-child policy. The effects of the new policy are inevitably speculative, but predictions can be made based on recent trends. The population increase will be relatively small, peaking at 1·45 billion in 2029 (compared with a peak of 1·4 billion in 2023 if the one-child policy continued). The new policy will allow almost all Chinese people to have their preferred number of children. The benefits of the new policy include: a large reduction in abortions of unapproved pregnancies, virtual elimination of the problem of unregistered children, and a more normal sex ratio. All of these effects should improve health outcomes. Effects of the new policy on the shrinking workforce and rapid population ageing will not be evident for two decades. In the meantime, more sound policy actions are needed to meet the social, health, and care needs of the elderly population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In less than one generation, a unique demographic transition has taken place in Iran. A population growth rate of 4.06% in 1984 fell to 1.15% in 1993 and a total fertility rate of 6.4 births per woman in 1984 declined to 1.9 in 2010. In 2012, Iranian policymakers shifted away from a birth control policy towards a pro-natalist policy. At first glance, this may seem reasonable since its goal is to avoid the consequences of an aging population. However, we argue that the policy package raises serious public health, socioeconomic, environmental and ethical concerns and is likely to fail on its own terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: We assessed the impact on depot medroxyprogesterone continuation when a large care provider was banned from a state-funded family planning program.Study Design: We used three methods to assess the effect of the ban: (a) In a records review, we compared how many state program participants returned to two Planned Parenthood affiliates for a scheduled dose of depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) immediately after the ban; (b) We conducted phone interviews with 224 former Planned Parenthood patients about DMPA use and access to contraception immediately after the ban; (c) We compared current contraceptive method of our interviewees to that of comparable DMPA users in the National Survey of Family Growth 2006-2010 (NSFG).Results: (a) Fewer program clients returned for DMPA at a large urban Planned Parenthood, compared to a remotely located affiliate (14.4%, vs. 64.8%), reflecting different levels of access to alternative providers in the two cities. (b) Among program participants who went elsewhere for the injection, only 56.8% obtained it at no cost and on time. More than one in five women missed a dose because of barriers, most commonly due to difficulty finding a provider. (c) Compared to NSFG participants, our interviewees used less effective methods of contraception, even more than a year after the ban went into effect.Conclusions: Injectable contraception use was disrupted during the rollout of the state-funded family planning program. Women living in a remote area of Texas encountered more barriers.Implications: Requiring low-income family planning patients to switch healthcare providers has adverse consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Medical News article is an interview with Leana Wen, MD, the new president of Planned Parenthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the Title X Family Planning Program under the U.S. government agency Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It highlights the effect of the regulation to quality and effectiveness of services offered by health care providers to reproductive health and childbearing decisions. Benefits of the program to distinguish abortions from other services, are also mentioned.

The article discusses the importance of sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR) for sustainable economic development. It discusses the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in 1994 in Cairo, Egypt recognizing reproductive rights as human rights. It mentions the Guttmacher-Lancet Commission report on SRHR providing insights into advancing SRHR by associating them with health services, and achieving the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Currently, abortion can be lawfully performed in China at any gestational stage for a wide range of social and medical reasons. I critically explore the Chinese regulatory model of abortion in order to examine its practical effects on women. Although I focus on the post-Maoist abortion law, I also analyse the imperial Confucianism-dominated regulation and the Maoist ban on abortion in order to scrutinise the emergence of the notion of 'glorious motherhood'. By examining how 'glorious motherhood' is constructed and reinforced in the Chinese family planning context, I argue that the post-Maoist government intentionally made abortion 'law in the books' unrestrictive in order to impose its control over female fertility. As a result of this, women are persuaded and even forced to lead a 'glorious' maternal life, which means sacrificing themselves for the purpose of achieving the state's Malthusian and eugenic demographic goals. Furthermore, I argue that, in addition to exacerbating gender oppression, abortion law's embrace of the idea of 'glorious motherhood' also produces 'group oppression' of unmarried women and working-class women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut. Topics discussed include laws against birth control, family planning and use of contraception in United States. Other topics such as health care, reproductive health and non-governmental organization Planned Parenthood are also discussed.

This Viewpoint discusses SB8, the recent law passed in Texas that essentially prohibits abortion after 6 weeks of gestational age, and the effect this will have on persons seeking pregnancy termination as well as the future of constitutional protection of abortion services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on several aspects of Medicaid coverage for family planning in the U.S. It mentions ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in the "Does v. Gillespie" court case. It also mentions that the Eighth Circuit has the power to reconsider and change its ruling, upon an appeal from the plaintiffs and several U.S. states have sought to illegally exclude planned parenthood clinics from Medicaid.

The article offers information on the services provided by the nonprofit organization Planned Parenthood in need to improve women's health in the U.S.. Topics discussed include plans of leaders of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists regarding its intensions to defund Planned Parenthood, effects of defunding Planned Parenthood on many women, services provided by Planned Parenthood like health services, economic security and child planning.

The article focuses on the passage of the Reproductive Health Bill (RH Bill) in the Philippines in 2012 and on the criticism of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) against it. The opposition between the Catholic Church and the government is also discussed. Explored is the impact of social media on the negative public perception to the response of the Church on the family planning legislation.

Objective: To explore the potential regulation on the unplanned births of Shanghai immigrants, by which to guide those Shanghai immigrants to change their child-bearing concept and to promote the fusion between immigrants and local population. Methods: The typical survey was performed in Huamu Street, Pudong, Shanghai, where there were a large number of immigrants. More than 550 cases of immigrants were included by the questionnaire survey combined with survey symposium. The questionnaire includes fertility concept, fertility intentions, the cognition of family planning policies and regulations, the need for family planning services, etc. The SPSS 19.0 software was used for data processing. Results: Shanghai immigrants have distinctive thought and behavior characteristics, including strong child-bearing intentions, low understanding and approval of family planning policies and regulations in Shanghai. They obeyed the law of family planning in poor status. The service of family planning can not effectively met the demand of the Shanghai immigrants. Conclusions: It is important to guide the Shanghai immigrants to transform their child-bearing concept and to understand and obey the family planning law by enhancing education of family planning and management of legal system, and providing the high-quality services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In science transsexuality is defined as extreme form of gender dysphoria - incongruity of gender identity and gender roles with biological gender in specific case. Science has proven that transsexuality is not life choice or mental disease, but so-called intersexual disorder which culminates in an effort to change a gender in specific case. If we access to the problem in legal aspect, we can notice that several issues stands out -- the principle of immutability of gender, legal assumptions for gender change, changes in civil status and transsexuality viewed through the prism of marriage in terms of its conditions for the validity. This indicates on the subjects of our study, and it is : terms, procedure, and jurisdiction for gender change, gender change and rights for family planning, transsexuality and marriage (question of sameness/dissimilarity genders from aspect of the validity of marriage, heterosexual or homosexual marriage/community -- legal regulation and legal effect). Although there were a decade since first surgery of gender change and the number of transsexuals is increasing, to this problem is approached with disinterest when it comes to legal norms. During the work on our study we applied: normative method, comparative legal method, other methods that are used in other social sciences(analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction),with the aim of pointing out the seriousness and the need for legal regulation of this problem, current in society of twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents edited remarks of the author that was delivered at a symposium on women's reproductive rights and the law presented by the Albany Law Journal of Science and Technology on October 11, 2012. He discussed several topics including insurance coverage for birth control in New York, effectiveness of private health insurance, and family planning under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of the U.S. He analyzes role of obstetrics and gynecology in reproductive healthcare.

The article urges the U.S. Federal government to maintain its support of Title X of the Public Health Service Act, said to be the only federal program dedicated entirely to family planning and related preventive health care services. It adds that as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) goes into full effect by 2014, the Title X network of family planning service providers are well-situated to help individuals who will be newly covered by the Medicaid program to obtain high-quality health care.

The article discusses the U.S. Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade, regarding defunding Planned Parenthood and banning race-selection abortion. It informs that arguments dealing with abortion-rights, eugenics movements, and population-control dissimilate from one another and are full of flaws. It suggests that by reinterpreting the Court holding in Roe, feminists created opportunities to reconstruct racial politics of abortion.

The article offers information on history, development and importance of the Jewish law, which promotes human reproduction and the protection of human health. It discusses the effectiveness of the U.S. government regulations that supports the Jewish law in context to family planning subjects including abortion, contraception, cloning, genetic engineering, and other alternative reproductive technologies.

CONTEXT The federal Title X grant program provides funding for family planning services for low-income women and men. In California, all clinics receiving Title X funds participate in the state's family planning program, Family PACT, along with other public and private providers. The relative extent to which Title X-funded clinics and other Family PACT providers have incorporated enhancements beyond their core medical services has never been studied. METHODS In 2010, a survey was sent to public- and private-sector Family PACT clinicians to assess whether funding streams were associated with the availability of special services: extended clinic hours, outreach to vulnerable populations, services for clients not proficient in English and use of advanced clinic-based technologies. Bivariate and logistic regression analyses controlling for potentially confounding factors were conducted. RESULTS Greater proportions of Title X-funded clinics than of other public and private providers had Spanish-speaking unlicensed clinical staff (89% vs. 71% and 58%, respectively) and Spanish-language signs (95% vs. 85% and 82%). Title X-funded providers were more likely than other public providers to offer extended clinic hours, provide outreach to at least three vulnerable or hard-to-reach populations, and use three or more advanced technologies (odds ratios, 2.0-2.9). CONCLUSIONS Compared with other Family PACT providers, clinics that receive Title X funding have implemented greater infrastructure enhancements to promote access and improve the quality of service for underserved populations. This may be because Title X-funded providers have more financial opportunities to provide the array of services that best respond to their clients' needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the impact of family size on maternal health outcomes by exploiting the tremendous change in family size under the One-Child policy in China. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey 1993-2006, we find that mothers with fewer children have a higher calorie intake and a lower probability of being underweight and having low blood pressure; meanwhile, they have a higher probability of being overweight. This would occur if a smaller family size increases the food consumption of mothers, leading underweight women to attain a normal weight and normal weight women becoming overweight. Robust tests are performed to provide evidence on the hypothesis that the tradeoff between children's quantity and mother's 'quality' is through a budget constraint mechanism, that is, having more children decreases the resource allocated to mothers and affects their health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Estudos Feministas is the property of Revista Estudos Feministas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article focuses on free choice of provider protections by Medicaid in context of family planning. A law prohibiting state agencies from contracting with any entity that performs abortion was brought into focus by the state of Indiana in May 2011. In June 2011, a federal judge enjoined the state from implementing the law on basis of violation of federal Medicaid requirements by Indiana's law.

Abstract: The medical duty of confidentiality represents a key element for the provision of reproductive and sexual health services. In some Latin American countries, such as Argentina and Peru, the legal systems impose—or are interpreted as imposing—on health professionals the duty of confidentiality, but also the duty to report the commission of a public order offense that they know about owing to the practicing of their profession. In these countries, the conflicting duties and the criminalization of abortion cause severe public health and human rights problems when health professionals assist their patients for post-abortion treatment. Typically, patients are deterred from seeking prompt medical care, and their privacy, autonomy, and dignity are violated. A 2010 ruling from the Supreme Court of Argentina and a 2004 ruling from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights emerge as important instruments that grant a more adequate protection of medical confidentiality. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses the need to understand the importance of planned parenthood and the role it plays in the U.S. Family Planning Safety Net.

Reducing China's population has formerly been considered a good thing because of the perceived environmental and social risks of overpopulation, but it has recently become apparent that the resulting population decline may create problems that will become increasingly serious in the future. The results of a survey of 4600 women in nineteen Chinese provinces in 2005 indicated that young age, high income, high education level, urban location and good employment all decreased a woman's willingness to bear children. The risks created by declining fertility in these groups have been intensified by China's 'one child' family planning policy. However, as a result of current trends and China's policies, the country's population will continue to age, leading to social problems and difficulties for sustainable development both in China and around the world. Therefore, China's policy-makers must begin planning to adjust their policy by encouraging women to give birth to more than one child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses guidelines from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recommending that states cover every individual method of contraception for traditional Medicaid enrollees. It cites actions by CMS for 2016 including regulations issued on April 25 governing the involvement of private-sector managed care plans in Medicaid and one on April 19 which made it clear that federal law prohibits state officials from discriminating against those that provide abortion care.

The authors discuss the two-child policy of China being inforced by the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China, focusing on the maternity care and concerns over shortage of obstetricians, sonographers, and midwives. They explore the challenges presented by older pregnant women for obstetricians, the growing challenge of morbidity adherent placenta, and the requirement of increased maternity care services for high-risk pregnancies.