Recent Publications by CFE Educators

Reproductive health care is crucial to women's well-being and that of their families. State and federal laws restricting access to contraception and abortion in the United States are proliferating. Often the given rationales for these laws state or imply that access to contraception and abortion promote promiscuity, and/or that abortion is medically dangerous and causes a variety of adverse obstetric, medical, and psychological sequelae. These rationales lack scientific foundation. This article provides the evidence for the safety of abortion, for both women and girls, and encourages readers to advocate against restrictions.

The increased prevalence of obese, pregnant women who have a higher risk of glucose intolerance warrants the need for nutritional interventions to improve maternal glucose homeostasis. In this study, the effect of a low-glycemic load (GL) ( = 28) was compared to a high-GL ( = 34) dietary intervention during the second half of pregnancy in obese women (body mass index (BMI) > 30 or a body fat >35%). Anthropometric and metabolic parameters were assessed at baseline (20 week) and at 28 and 34 weeks gestation. For the primary outcome 3h-glucose-iAUC (3h-incremental area under the curve), mean between-group differences were non-significant at every study timepoint ( = 0.6, 0.3, and 0.8 at 20, 28, and 34 weeks, respectively) and also assessing the mean change over the study period ( = 0.6). Furthermore, there was no statistically significant difference between the two intervention groups for any of the other examined outcomes ( ≥ 0.07). In the pooled cohort, there was no significant effect of dietary GL on any metabolic or anthropometric outcome ( ≥ 0.2). A post hoc analysis comparing the study women to a cohort of overweight or obese pregnant women who received only routine care showed that the non-study women were more likely to gain excess weight ( = 0.046) and to deliver large-for-gestational-age (LGA) ( = 0.01) or macrosomic ( = 0.006) infants. Thus, a low-GL diet consumed during the last half of pregnancy did not improve pregnancy outcomes in obese women, but in comparison to non-study women, dietary counseling reduced the risk of adverse outcomes.