Pregnancy Intentions, Contraceptive Knowledge And Educational Aspirations Among Community College Students.

Context: Community college students, representing more than one-third of U.S. undergraduates, are a diverse population of young people motivated to seek higher education who are at elevated risk of unintended pregnancy.

Making Sense of Advice About Drinking During Pregnancy: Does Evidence Even Matter?

Women have been told not to drink during pregnancy for decades; last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) extended that advice to all women who were at risk for experiencing a pregnancy. This commentary puts the recent CDC guidelines in historical perspective and considers the unintended consequences of public health messages that extend beyond what is supported by evidence.

Commentary on the Consensus Statement-Centering the Norm: Let's Make "Normal Birth" Usual Again.

In this column, Elizabeth Mitchell Armstrong provides expert commentary on the article "Supporting Healthy and Normal Physiologic Childbirth: A Consensus Statement by ACNM, MANA, and NACPM." The consensus statement on normal physiologic birth points the way to recenter social norms and expectations around birth.

Home birth matters-for all women.

Although it remains rare in the United States, planned home birth has drawn increasing attention and criticism in the mainstream media and has come under attack from organized medicine. Yet, recent peer-reviewed studies contribute to the evidence base supporting home birth as a safe option for low-risk women attended by skilled midwives. The author of this editorial argues that home birth is an important cultural touchstone in the landscape of American maternity care.

Blueprint for action: steps toward a high-quality, high-value maternity care system.

Childbirth Connection hosted a 90th Anniversary national policy symposium, Transforming Maternity Care: A High Value Proposition, on April 3, 2009, in Washington, DC. Over 100 leaders from across the range of stakeholder perspectives were actively engaged in the symposium work to improve the quality and value of U.S.

Risk and the pregnant body.

Reasoning well about risk is most challenging when a woman is pregnant, for patient and doctor alike. During pregnancy, we tend to note the risks of medical interventions without adequately noting those of failing to intervene, yet when it's time to give birth, interventions are seldom questioned, even when they don't work. Meanwhile, outside the clinic, advice given to pregnant women on how to stay healthy in everyday life can seem capricious and overly cautious.