In-Vitro Alternative

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Dec. 13 — Women can avoid costly in-vitro fertilization procedures by first seeing if they suffer from endometriosis, a condition that has been linked to infertility, according to a study to be published this month in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

Endometriosis — a condition caused when tissue that normally lines the uterus develops in other parts of the body — is diagnosed through laparoscopy.

Camran Nezhat, a surgeon and fertility specialist at Stanford University, studied 29 women who had failed to become pregnant using in-vitro fertilization and later were tested for and diagnosed with endometriosis. Once the study participants had undergone treatment for the condition, 22 of the women became pregnant — 13 of them without fertility treatments.

Mother Bequeaths Life

NORTHERN ECHO, Dec. 11 — A mother who developed breast cancer while pregnant with her fourth child died after refusing treatment that could have saved her but at the expense of her unborn baby, reported the English daily.

She delivered a healthy son, Nathan, two months premature, and lived long enough to witness his baptism.

Bernadette Mimura, 37, rejected the option of abortion and refused aggressive chemotherapy even though such treatment is permitted by Catholic teaching since it would have been undertaken to preserve life, not destroy it.

 

Court Upholds Obscenity Law

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Dec. 11 — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit reversed a district-court decision and upheld federal obscenity laws.

The ruling came in the federal government’s appeal of the dismissal of an indictment against Extreme Associates, an enterprise that produces violent hardcore pornography whose scenes include simulated rape.

“If this case would have been lost, it could have brought federal prosecution of hardcore obscenity to a halt in that circuit,” said Alan Sears, who served as executive director of the U.S. Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography under President Ronald Reagan.