Welcome to Mother's Choice

A Mother's Choice
"A Mother’s Choice strives to inform and raise awareness of the socio-economic issues surrounding abortion, as well as, provide understanding of the challenges faced by women as mothers."

Prematurity 'affects personality'

BBC NEWS
"Being born very premature can affect a child's personality into adulthood, a study has suggested."

What predicts traditional attitudes to marriage? (Abstract)

Children & Society
"This study, using data from 5,689 cohort members of the National Child Development Study, explores the impact of both structure of parenting family and contextual factors on attitudes towards marriage at age 33. Traditional attitudes to marriage were positively related to religiosity and negatively related to high non-verbal skills in childhood and smoking or drinking in adulthood but were unrelated to the structure or background of parental family. The results also yielded some very interesting gender differences. For example, the presence of partner at age 33 significantly predicted traditional attitudes to marriage in women but not in men. In men, by contrast, it was the presence of children at age 33, the absence of qualifications and current low socio-economic status that were associated with traditional attitudes to marriage. The implications of these findings on future family change are discussed. "

Risk Factors and Life Processes Associated with Teenage Pregnancy: Results of a Prospective Study From Birth to 20 Years

Journal of Marriage and Family
Lianne Woodward, David M. Fergusson, and L. John Horwood
Data gathered over the course of a 20-year longitudinal study of 533 New Zealand women were used to (a) describe the extent and timing of pregnancies within the cohort up to age 20, and (b) examine the extent to which the risk of an early pregnancy was related to a range of social background, family, individual, and peer relationship factors measured over the course of childhood and adolescence. Results showed that by age 20, nearly a quarter of the sample had been pregnant at least once, with the majority of first pregnancies occurring between the ages of 17 and 20 years. The profile of those at greatest risk of a teenage pregnancy (<20 years) was that of an early-maturing girl with conduct problems who had been reared in a family environment characterized by parental instability and maternal role models of young single motherhood. As young adolescents, these girls were characterized by high rates of sexual risk-taking and deviant peer involvement. Exposure to social and individual adversity during both childhood and adolescence made independent contributions to an individual's risk of an early pregnancy. These findings were most consistent with a life course developmental model of the etiology of teenage pregnancy. Implications for teenage pregnancy prevention are discussed."

Maternal Age and Educational and Psychosocial Outcomes in Early Adulthood

J Child Psychol & Psychiat
"The relationships between maternal age (at birth) and educational and psychosocial outcomes at age 18 were examined in a birth cohort of 1025 New Zealand children. This analysis indicated the presence of consistent tendencies for increasing maternal age to be associated with declining risks of educational underachievement, juvenile crime, substance misuse, and mental health problems. Children with teenage mothers had risks of later adverse outcomes that were 1.5 to 8.9 times higher than the risks for offspring of mothers aged over 30. Subsequent analyses revealed that the associations between maternal age and later educational and psychosocial outcomes were largely, but not wholly, explained by associations between maternal age and the child-rearing practices and home environments experienced by children. In general, increasing maternal age tended to be associated with more nurturant, supportive, and stable home environments. In turn, these linkages between maternal and childhood environment explained most of the association between maternal age and later outcomes. The theoretical and applied implications of these results are considered."

future of children

Articles
"As Nobel laureate James Heckman notes, evaluations of social programs targeted at children from disadvantaged families suggest that it is easier to change cognition and behavior in early childhood than in adolescence.4"

Deaths associated with abortion compared to childbirth: a review of new and old data and the medical and legal implications

The Journal of Contemporary Health Law & Policy 2004
Reardon DC, Strahan TW, Thorp JM, Shuping MW

Methods for identifying pregnancy-associated deaths: population-based data from Finland 1987–2000

Paediatr Perinat Epidemiol

To find maternal and pregnancy-related deaths, it is important that all pregnancy-associated deaths are identified. This article examines the effect of data linkages between national health care registers and complete death certificate data on pregnancy-associated deaths. All deaths among women of reproductive age (15–49 years) in Finland during the period 1987–2000 (n = 15 823) were identified from the Cause-of-Death Register and linked to the Medical Birth Register (n = 865 988 births), the Register on Induced Abortions (n = 156 789 induced abortions), and the Hospital Discharge Register (n = 118 490 spontaneous abortions) to determine whether women had been pregnant within 1 year before death. The death certificates of the 419 women thus identified were reviewed to find whether the pregnancy or its termination was coded or mentioned. In total, 405 deaths (96.7%) were identified in registers other than the Cause-of-Death Register. Without data linkages, 73% of all pregnancy-associated deaths would have been missed; the percentage after induced and spontaneous abortions was even higher. Data linkages to national health care registers provide better information on maternal deaths and pregnancy-associated deaths than death certificates alone. If possible, pregnancies not ending in a live birth should be included in the data linkages.

Scant Drop Seen in Abortion Rate if Parents Are Told

New York Times
For all the passions they generate, laws that require minors to notify their parents or get permission to have an abortion do not appear to have produced the sharp drop in teenage abortion rates that some advocates hoped for, an analysis by The New York Times shows.
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Abortion foes split on tactics

csmonitor.com: "WASHINGTON - South Dakota has reignited the battle over abortion - and not just the usual one between opposing camps. A long-simmering debate has also heated up within the antiabortion movement.

Here's the question: Is it smarter to try to undo the nationwide legal right to abortion with one sweeping law - a 'full-frontal attack' - or via a series of smaller laws that chip away at abortion rights and severely restrict access?

The easy passage last week by the South Dakota legislature of a bill banning nearly all abortions in the state has moved the question to center stage. The bill contains no exceptions for rape or incest; it allows abortion only when it is deemed necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman. Backers of the bill across the country are urging the governor to sign it, thus sending it on a legal journey they hope will eventually reach the US Supreme Court.

But that gambit could backfire, setting back efforts to overturn the 1973 ruling, Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in all 50 states. Currently, the majority of sitting justices are on the record favoring Roe. And there is no guarantee that the two new justices, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, would look favorably upon a petition to reconsider Roe so soon after joining the court, or even in a few years.

'The only thing that asking for too much, too soon, produces is a further reaffirmation of Casey and Roe,' says legal historian David Garrow, referring to a 1992 high-court case that reinforced the core holding of Roe. 'As we heard countless times from Alito and Roberts at their [confirmation] hearings, every time a precedent is reendorsed, it is further strengthened.'
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