Sept. 11 Baby Boom

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Dec. 26 — Doctors say more women will have babies next year, a reaction to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In November, the Greenville, S.C., Hospital System's Women's Health Institute had a 10% increase in the registration of new pregnant patients, said administrator Dr. Robert V. Cummings.

Greenville obstetrician Dr. Michael R. Hoffman said so many patients were asking whether they should pursue pregnancy that he hung a banner in his waiting room with Carl Sandburg's quote: “A baby is God's opinion the world should go on.”

Adoption vs. In Vitro

AMERICAN LIFE LEAGUE, Dec. 19 — John Kurtz and his wife, Donna, of suburban Philadelphia, struggle with infertility. The Kurtzes found their answer in adoption, reported American Life League. “There's no need to go outside God's plan for procreation,” said Kurtz.

Over the course of 20 years, the Kurtzes have adopted 15 children from orphanages, prisons and foster care programs. Many of the children were rescued from abusive situations.

“In vitro fertilization automatically puts a selective mentality into raising a family, but adoption focuses on an already existing child who needs a loving home,” said Mrs. Brown. “The Kurtzes are heroic examples of what it means to appreciate children as gifts.”

The Pill and Heart Risk

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Dec. 19 — A Dutch study found that women who took second-generation birth control pills had two and a half times the heart attack risk of other women. But women who took third-generation pills had essentially the same risk as other women, according to findings published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Second-generation pills, which often carry the hormone levonorgestrel, date back to the 1970s. Third-generation contraceptives, which often contain desogestrel or gestodene, became available in the United States in the 1990s.

HHS to Investigate Grants

CYBERCAST NEWS SERVICE, Dec. 21 — The Department of Health and Human Services will investigate why a company devoted to cloning a human being got federal funding, according pro-life Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.), a leading congressional opponent of human cloning.

Advanced Cell Technology announced Thanksgiving weekend that it had cloned a human embryo. A month prior to that announcement the company had received grants from the National Institutes of Health, courtesy of American taxpayers.

In a Dec. 20 letter to Pitts, HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson said he has “asked the National Institutes of Health to inform me whether ACT had received any federal grants which might have been involved in this human cloning research.”