A womb transplant was tried on a human in 2000, but the organ had to be removed after three months because of problems with its blood supply. But now surgeon Richard Smith (that's not him above) has developed a "vascular patch technique" that connects major blood vessels like the aorta. His team performed transplants in five rabbits, two of which lived for 10 months after the procedure. Examinations after the rabbits died showed the transplants were successful.

Smith said the next step is to impregnate rabbits to see how the transplanted womb handles pregnancy. Then he will try the procedure on bigger animals — if he can get the money. He's been denied grants from several medical organizations, perhaps because of questions about the usefulness of his procedure. A transplant could allow a woman to carry a child if she was born without a womb, or if the organ was damaged by cancer or another disease. But she would probably need IVF, as the transplant would raise the risk of ectopic pregnancy if she conceived naturally. And she would need to deliver by C-section because the transplanted womb would likely not hold up in labor. And of course, the transplant itself would carry risks — the womb would only be left in long enough for the woman to have a child, but during that period she would need to take immunosuppressant drugs. The whole procedure would be expensive and potentially dangerous, and Smith says, "There's a lot of dismissal in the profession in terms of this being a step too far in terms of fertility management."

It's worthwhile to ask what "a step too far" really is. Some people object to IVF because of its expense or because of the risk of multiple births. Others see ethical problems with surrogacy, finding it distasteful to pay a woman to be pregnant. But both techniques have gained fairly wide acceptance, and it's possible that womb transplants would too. Smith says, "for a woman who's desperate for a baby, this is incredibly important." His choice of the word "desperate" is a little questionable, but the popularity of IVF does show that many women — and men — who have trouble conceiving still want to have biological children. Womb transplants would extend this opportunity to a group of women who don't currently have it. While some opponents of fertility treatment advocate adoption for such women, that's far from a cheap or easy process either. If Smith's research succeeds, it will give women without wombs the same options as women with them — which seems, on balance, like a good thing.

Womb Transplants 'A Step Closer' [BBC]
Womb Transplants 'On The Way In Two Years' [Daily Mail]
British Scientists Step Closer To Womb Transplants [Guardian]

The sperm, created by exposing stem cells to "a special cocktail of growth factors, nutrients and retinoic acid, a derivative of vitamin A," have a head and tail, a special combination of proteins needed for fertilization, 23 chromosomes, and the ability to swim — just like ordinary, ball-produced sperm. However, sperm biologist Allan Pacey (who obviously got his job by losing a game of MASH) is skeptical. He says,

The quality of the images is not of sufficiently high resolution and I would need more data. They are early sperm, but functional tests would be needed to know exactly what has been achieved.

But the most obvious "functional test," using the sperm to fertilize an egg, is exactly what journalists and scientists alike assure us will not happen. Apparently identifying a deep-seated fear triggered by this research, four different news outlets report that the sperm breakthrough doesn't mean scientists will soon be creating human beings in a "dish." EurekAlert quotes lead researcher Karim Nayernia, who says,

While we can understand that some people may have concerns, this does not mean that humans can be produced 'in a dish' and we have no intention of doing this. This work is a way of investigating why some people are infertile and the reasons behind it. If we have a better understanding of what's going on it could lead to new ways of treating infertility.

Despite Nayernia's assurances that the sperm will be used to study male infertility and not to create a race of dish-people (and the fact that UK law prohibits the created sperm from being used in actual fertility treatments), critics are concerned. Josephine Quintavalle of Comment on Reproductive Ethics says,

This is an example of immoral madness. Perfectly viable human embryos have been destroyed in order to create sperm over which there will be huge questions of their healthiness and viability.

It's taking one life in order to perhaps create another. I'm very much in favour of curing infertility but I don't think you can do whatever you like.

The idea that curing male infertility is okay but producing embryos "in a dish" is not may speak to an anxiety underlying much of the coverage of this breakthrough: what if artificial sperm meant women could reproduce without men? Though they are quick to quote Nayernia's "dish" reassurances, none of the articles mentioned this anxiety explicitly, perhaps because of a lucky loophole: at this point, only male stem cells can be used to create workable sperm. So men are safe, for now. But as soon as we figure out how to make sperm from our own lady cells, we're going to send all the men to Siberia and use "dishes" to create what we really want — babies!

We expected Slate's William Saletan to be all over this issue, and he probably will be. But today his column deals with a more important question: "Does God want you to masturbate?" The answer: hell yeah, but only because it improves men's "sperm quality" — perhaps protecting them from stem-cell-induced obsolescence.

Scientists Create Human Sperm from Stem Cells [Time]
Scientists Claim Sperm 'First' [BBC]
Human Sperm Created From Embryonic Stem Cells [EurekAlert]
Scientists Claim Breakthrough In Growing Human Sperm From Stem Cells [Guardian]
Experts Query Sperm Creation Claim [Mirror]
Wank Thyself [Slate]

Gautam Naik writes in the Wall Street Journal that, despite a 2007 guidance from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, there is zero evidence that PGS increases the rate of live births among older women undergoing IVF procedures, and doctors have continued to perform (and encourage women to have) it. Why? Naik has a potential answer.

Backed by limited positive data from a decade ago, some U.S. fertility clinics have aggressively marketed the PGS technique to older women. It isn't cheap. Embryo screening can add $2,000 or more to the typical cost of roughly $10,000 per treatment cycle of in-vitro fertilization. While some insurance companies cover IVF treatment, very few pay for PGS, which insurers consider experimental.

In other words, PGS is the new undercoating.

While doctors who use and market PGS in their practices despite the ASRM's guidance defend its use and effectiveness, rigorous studies showing otherwise have been available since 2004.

A randomized trial in 2004, in which a Belgian research team studied nearly 300 fertilization procedures, was among the first to indicate that embryo screening may not improve the live birth rate.

A recent Swedish trial, which included more than 100 women over the age of 38, suggests that embryo screening may actually hurt a woman's chances of having a baby. The study found that the pregnancy rate in a PGS group was 8.9% compared with 24.5% in a control group that didn't use PGS. The study, published in the journal Human Reproduction in December, was stopped midway after the data showed the sharply lower pregnancy rate.

Most randomized studies (and sometimes even the doctors don't know which is the control and which is the experimental group) are only stopped if the evidence shows convincingly that they are doing more harm than good.

Scientists have a potential hypothesis for why the post-PGS pregnancy rate was nearly 3 times lower than the non-PGS rate: PGS is often performed on a 6-cell embryo, likely to mitigate the political hot potato of destroying the embryos that are found to be malformed. This, however, might represent a bigger problem than doctors initially envisaged.

Doctors postulated that in performing PGS, the process of removing a single cell could damage other cells in the embryo. "The probability of doing harm with PGS turned out to be higher," says Thorir Hardarson, biologist at Carlanderska Hospital Fertility Center in Gothenberg, Sweden, who led the trial.

Doctors looking at embryos from otherwise healthy fertile couples have a further explanation, after discovering that the rate of abnormality in their PGS screenings was very despite the theoretical probability being very low.

The answer appears to be that the single cell extracted from each embryo could be genetically slightly different from the others, and therefore not representative of the overall embryo, a condition known as mosaicism. In fact, removing an error-free cell from an embryo might lower the chances that that embryo will grow into a healthy baby, because the remaining cells might not be as viable, Dr. Vermeesch says

Either way, women being pressured into or sold on PGS as a way to improve their chances at conceiving through IVF are paying money for something that, at best, has little effect on their chances of conception and, at worse, might actually be harming it.

Fertility Method For Older Women Spawns Doubts [Wall Street Journal]

In a study published in the journal Nature Cell Biology, Chinese researchers performed experiments on mice, showing for the first time that a mammal can produce new eggs as an adult that lead to healthy offspring, reports theWashington Post. Scientists from Shanghai Jiao Tong University identified female germ line stem cells in ovaries removed from mice. After coaxing the cells to multiply, they were injected into sterile mice. Some of the cells matured into eggs, and another group of mice was able to produce healthy offspring.

While men produce new sperm daily, for at least 50 years scientists have believed that female mammals are born with all the eggs they will ever have and the supply is depleted over time, leaving them infertile after menopause. The new study raises new possibilities for the treatment of infertility, as freezing stem cells may be more efficient than freezing eggs and there may be ways to stimulate the cells to produce eggs in older women. The cells may also have a use in stem cell research by producing embryonic stem cell lines specific to individual patients.

Several recent studies have suggested that women may generate more eggs during adulthood, but this is the first time scientists have obtained the cells that can produce healthy new eggs from a mammal. "If you are looking to disprove that females cannot make new eggs, this paper proves it. It's a really significant paper," said Harvard Medical School professor Jonathan L. Tilly, who published some of the earlier research. "This is the smoking gun."

Other scientists say more research needs to be done on humans, not mice, and question if the mice used in the experiment were really completely sterilized. "The aging process of the human egg differs fundamentally from that of the mouse egg," said David L. Keefe, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of South Florida. "Except at Disney World, humans are not large mice."

Still, doctors hope that the cells could lead to new procedures someday, especially since treating infertility has become a lucrative, multibillion dollar business. The L.A. Times reports that the competition became so intense at the Huntington Reproductive Center in Pasadena, one of the biggest fertility practices on the West coast, that it has spurred a series of lawsuits. After founder Dr. Joel Batzofin's business grew to make a $5 million yearly profit, his five partners took a secret vote and ousted him from the business. The former partners sued each other in a six year legal battle that led to private detectives posing as patients. A female detective submitted to an ultrasound of her uterus and ovaries, and one of the doctors gave his own sperm sample to a rival doctor, pretending to be a patient, all in an effort to show that Batzofin was violating a non-compete agreement at his new practice. "It's a cutthroat business," said Batzofin. "There is a lot of greed."

But according to another new study published this week, even more women may be turning to fertility treatments, as having a high-powered career has supposedly been linked to lowered fertility. The Times of London reports that University of Utah anthropologist Elizabeth Cashdan found that women with stressful careers experience a hormonal shift that replaces estrogen with male androgens that are associated with strength, stamina, and competitiveness.

Cashdan analyzed the waist to hip ratio (WHR) of women from 37 different populations and cultures, and found the average WHR to be above 0.8. She says that due to a hormonal shift, the women had a more straight-up-and-down figure that is less conducive to child-bearing. Previous studies have found that women with an hourglass figure, with a WHR of 0.7 are the most fertile.

"Although the hormonal profile associated with a high WHR may favour success in some stressful and difficult circumstances where women must work hard, there are well-known costs," said Cashdan. "Women may suffer lower fertility and possibly lower attractiveness to men who may have an innate preference for curviness."

A Possible Step Toward Setting The Biological Clock [The Washington Post]
Fertility Doctors' Competition Spawns Lawsuits [The L.A. Times]
Is Your Career Making You Infertile? [The Times of London]

While the bill was more or less gutted, it would prohibit cloning (and fertilizing an egg with material from another egg, which is technically possible) and it would only allow it for the treatment of infertility, which is the more problematic part. Saletan explains:

Resolve remains unhappy that the bill doesn't clearly permit IVF for "women who have medical conditions like kidney disease that prevent them from carrying a pregnancy, but who are not usually considered to have 'infertility.'"

But Saletan assumes that's more of an oversight than an agenda. The agenda, he thinks, is to limit or eliminate the creation of embryos for genetic testing.

That use is the screening of embryos for unwanted genes: preimplantation genetic diagnosis.

PGD began with screening for fatal childhood diseases but has gradually expanded to flaws that are less lethal, less harmful, less likely to cause disease, and less likely to strike early in life.

It's used for everything from screening for gender to screening for deformities to (supposedly) screening for physical characteristics like hair and eye color. Saletan considers it all a "slippery slope."

The bill is part of a nationwide project to regulate the emerging industry of embryo production. In one state or another-and then another and another-legislation will be filed to restrict IVF. Based on the Georgia experiment, these bills will probably make exceptions for infertility but not PGD. The battles, then, will be fought over which uses of PGD are acceptable. And these fights will be every bit as ugly as the preceding fights over abortion.

Regulating embryo production, as Saletan terms it, comes from the same religious movement that regards embryos as having souls — they're pushing personhood amendments and anti-abortion laws while seeking to eliminate federal funds for stem cell research and prevent cloning. So, I agree that it is a slippery slope, though for different reasons than Saletan.

This is one of those issues that will be hard for pro-choice advocates to fight. Most people are not keen on parents who abort girl fetuses because they are girls — and the religious people will argue that discarding embryos for the same reasons is equally bad. They'll argue that discarding fetuses because they're got brown-haired genes instead of blonde is as bad as aborting children for the same reason. And, as it is difficult to argue that sex-selective or eye-color-selective abortions are justifiable, the pro-choice movement will have difficulty arguing about the justifiability of PGD for reasons chosen by parents (or mothers) as opposed to governments. And then the government will be back regulating when and for what reason you can choose to make decisions about the contents (or soon-to-be contents) of your uterus. So the real question is whether you think you can trust to government to give you the choices it deems appropriate, or whether it is worth letting a few bad actors poison the choice pool.

Dish Respect [Slate]

Earlier: Nadya Suleman Is The New Poster Girl For Restricting Reproductive Rights

The bill, titled the "Ethical Treatment of Human Embryos Act," is the most sweeping state legislation on fertility procedures introduced since Suleman gave birth to her octuplets in January, according to the Wall Street Journal. Republican state Senator Ralph T. Hudgens, one of the sponsors of the bill, said in an interview:

Nadya Suleman is going to cost the state of California millions of dollars over the years; the taxpayers are going to have to fund the 14 children she has ... I don't want that to happen in Georgia.

The proposed bill would limit the number of embryos implanted in a woman at one time to two, or three for women over 40. It also goes a step further, with limitations on the number of embryos created in the lab to the number being implanted. This would essentially eliminate a woman's ability to freeze her eggs, which is unsurprising, considering the bill was drafted in part by the Georgia Right to Life organization. The group's president, Daniel Becker, tells the Journal, "To us it's a human-rights issue," adding that embryos deserve legal protection "as living human beings and not as property."

Several scientific organizations are opposed to the bill because it would end embryo freezing, and because they say in some cases it's necessary to implant more than two or three embryos. Sean Tipton of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine says the lawmakers "don't understand the complicated medicine behind it." Currently, the organization urges doctors to transfer only two embryos at a time into patients under 35, and no more than five in a woman over 40, but the guidelines aren't mandatory.

Resolve, a national fertility association, also opposes the bill. Executive Director Barbara Collura says: "It's the right of the person who has gone through this procedure to decide what they can do with those embryos, not their doctor, and certainly not the government."

While up to this point, we've watched the Nadya Suleman story turn into a tabloid media circus, this legislation marks the beginning of the octuplets' birth spurring actual legal changes. Georgia lawmakers point out that other countries, such as Britain, already limit the number of embryos transferred per cycle. Other countries have found ways to reducing risky multiple births, but they've also adopted policies that don't severely limit women's rights. Hopefully in the U.S., as more states introduce limits on embryo transfers inspired by Nadya Suleman, lawmakers will consult with doctors and create legislation backed by fertility specialists that doesn't also seek to limit reproductive rights.

In-Vitro Fertilization Limit Is Sought [The Wall Street Journal]
Ethical Treatment Of Human Embryos Act [Georgia General Assembly]

Newsweek reports that this week, the American Fertility Association (AFA) will hold the first in a series of one-hour conversations about reproductive health with a "Manicures & Martinis" event at a Manhattan nail salon. The event is targeted at women in their 20s and 30s who aren't ready to have children yet. A group of 25 women will be served martinis and alcohol-free "fertilitinis" at the salon as a fertility expert leads a discussion about the reality of the biological clock and risk factors for fertility. "I wanted to create a program that was soft, that was light and that was non-threatening," says the AFA's director of development, Corey Whelan, who adds that the message of the program is "one of hope, not one of doom and gloom." The event is being promoted through social networking sites like Facebook so women can invite their friends in a "girlfriend-to-girlfriend experience."

The first salon event will be run by Dr. Jaime Grifo, program director at the New York University Fertility Center, who says the goal of the program is "not to be paternalistic or dictatorial, it's to be educational so people make decisions consciously rather than unconsciously." Though some say that harping on the threat of infertility is sexist and unfair to single women, others argue that having information on the topic is empowering. Though fertility varies greatly in women, studies show that generally fertility starts to decline in the late 20s and drops of dramatically in the late 30s. Grifo says that while many young women assume they'll have children one day, they don't think about how to get there. "It's so easy to deny and not think about these things and then show up in my office at 44 and say, 'I've tried for two months, what's wrong?'" she says.

While the AFA says the goal of the "Manicures & Martinis" event is not to induce a panic among younger women, in the UK, one Christian group attempted to instill the fear of infertility in even younger women to get them to refuse the HPV vaccine. The Daily Mail reports that the group Christian Voice ran an ad in the magazine New Statesmen that claimed: "Every Government initiative, including the HPV vaccine, will increase [teenage infertility], but as all the targets revolve around pregnancy, no-one in power knows how many young people they are making sterile and nobody cares." Following complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority, the agency investigated and ruled that the group has to pull the ad, since there is no significant scientific evidence that the HPV vaccine causes infertility in teenagers. Christian Voice now claims that their freedom of speech is being limited, since they argue that the HPV vaccine will increase teen sex and cause a surge in STD infections that cause infertility.

The AFA program in New York will discuss the negative effects of STDs, smoking, and substance abuse on fertility, in addition to age. It will also address fertility treatment options such as egg freezing, a procedure that can cost up to $10,000 and is still considered experimental. Though the AFA claims the only goal of the campaign is to educate women, it is funded by the drug company that makes the fertility drug Follistim, a pharmacy that provides fertility prescriptions, and several fertility clinics. But Whelan insists that though the AFA needs funding from these groups, they have not influenced what will be taught in the infertility prevention program. "We're trying to decrease the patient population, not increase it," she says.

Have Another ‘Fertilitini’ [Newsweek]
Watchdog Bans Christian Advert That Claims Cervical Cancer Vaccine Causes Infertility [The Daily Mail]

• Abortion will cause you eternal damnation, unless you are Catholic and feel really bad, promise your priest not to do it again and say a gazillion Hail Marys.
• Abortion — and particularly multiple abortions, you libidinous, unfeeling slut — will render you infertile. It could be medical, it could be karmic retribution, no one really knows.
• Every woman that has an abortion gets breast cancer. The mere act of sucking a human baby out of your uterus causes cancer cells to start forming in your breasts and there's nothing that can be done.
• If you manage to escape God's retribution for your immoral acts and do get pregnant after an abortion, you'll likely just miscarry or have an ectopic pregnancy. If you actually manage to carry the child to term, having aborted another child, God will visit upon your new baby birth defects or low birth weight, if He doesn't just kill your baby entirely.
• You'll basically want to kill yourself from the guilt after an abortion, and will definitely have a mental breakdown from realizing the consequences of your actions. This will manifest as depression, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or Leslee Unruh.
• Abortion will cause every woman who has one to end up not pregnant.

It's so hard to separate the myths from reality sometimes, I know.

Photo via Amelee/Deviant Art

Abortion Not Seen Linked With Depression [Reuters]

Related: Abortion Myths [National Abortion Federation]
Top 10 Anti-Abortion Myths [Ask.com]
courtesy of Amelee
Abortion Myths: Fact vs. Fiction [TeenWire]
Post Abortion Syndrome [National Abortion Federation]

Earlier: Abortion In New Zealand
The Many Contradictions Of Leslee Unruh, Anti-Abortion And "Purity" Advocate

Kuczynski talks about the deep pain and secrecy many women face when they are infertile, and "the terrible, wishful math" she tortured herself with each passing month because of her own infertility. Alex wasn't getting any younger and at age 39 enlisted a surrogate to carry her and her husband's baby to term. Kuczynski is self-aware enough to know that paying a ton of money (about $25,000) for a baby-carrier when so many foster children need a good home will be considered by some to be immensely selfish, and this is how she explains her unremitting desire for a biological baby.

What began as wistful longing in my 20s had blistered into a mad desire that seemed to defy logic. The compulsion to create our own bloodline seemed medieval, and I knew we could enjoy our marriage — our lives — without a child. Yet I couldn’t argue myself out of my desire…Die without having created a life, and die two deaths: the death of yourself, and the death of the immense opportunity that is a child. Not being pregnant suddenly seemed like a public statement, one that left me feeling exposed and vulnerable.

The thing to remember is that, for all women, regardless of socioeconomic status, decisions surrounding fertility are fraught with incredibly deep and often ambivalent emotions. In 50 years we're all going to be gestating babies in free floating artificial uteri anyway, so everyone needs to give other ladies a damn break.

Her Body, My Baby [NY Times Magazine — not online yet]

Earlier: Scientists Predict That Babies Of The Future Will Be Born To Centarians With Artificial Wombs

"For fertilization to take place, sperm must be able to reach the egg and then penetrate its outer layer," the L.A. Times notes. "Sperm that don't move well...may be unable to do so." As "lifestyle"
can be a a factor when "sperm that don't move well," I'm forced to surmise that too much weed renders one's junk unable to do anything but lie on the proverbial couch of one's innards.

Anyway! When couples are having fertility problems, 67% of women seek treatment before their male partners do, and almost half of women surveyed by the IntegraMed company reported that their partners only sought help when pressured. "Both the male and female partner should be worked up simultaneously," Dr. Walsh says. "Men are just as deserving of a comprehensive evaluation." Walsh adds that part of the issue is that women can just go to their gynecologist when facing reproductive problems, whereas men don't have the same kind of go-to doctor with whom they feel comfortable. All the same: if you're having issues with babymaking, make sure to get everyone involved a full medical workup.

Male
Biological Clock 'Ticks Too' [BBC]
Men
Can Be Infertile Too [LAT]

• Workout craze pilates isn't just for rich white women like Gwyneth Paltrow, Sarah Jessica Parker and Jennifer Aniston anymore! It's for rich, beefy white dudes too. [LA Times]
  
• As you may know, Oprah's school for girls in South Africa is being investigated for charges of sexual and physical abuse. Oprah says she is so sorry. You're gonna have to do better than that O! You haven't booked the audience for your "Favorite Things" episode yet — right??? [NY Daily News]
  
• Women who develop breast cancer are at no greater risk of having a more serious or lethal form of the disease if they smoke. Thank god, cause nothing would make us want a ciggie more. [MSNBC]

• Super fucking creepy. A woman who supposedly found a nanny job through Craigslist was murdered when she went to meet the poster. [KCTV5.com]
• The NY Times Magazine has an interesting story about adoptive parents who search for their child's birth mother. [NY Times]
• Argentina elected its first lady president, the current president's wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. What about Evita? [NY Times]
• Scientists are studying breast cancer through the translucent skin of the zebra fish to see how the disease grows. Nicole Kidman's milky complexion could probably work too. [Science Daily]
• Inter-sex females (i.e. hermaphrodites) do not, in most cases, absolutely need vaginal reconstruction - in most cases these women have shallow vaginas and testes that have not descended. Opting for surgery should be a choice, not necessity. [Science Daily]
• UK researchers have made a breakthrough in how infections cause infertility in cows would could lead to major conclusion in how to prevent infertility in women. [Science Daily]

We're only hearing the great stories. Very few people can have their own baby at 45. They are probably using surrogate eggs.

Or at least in-vitro. Have you noticed the crop of fraternal twins popping up for "older" women in Hollywood (Jane Seymour, Geena Davis, Julia Roberts, Nancy Grace, J. Lo)? And we say "older" because fertility begins to decline at the age of 28!

The idea is most likely perpetuated that these famous pregnancies are the result of traditional penis-in-the-vagina sex, because there's a stigma attached to infertility and the use of surrogates, probably because it indicates that one is "old" or "dried up." But really, it's not shameful at all.

Obviously, we shouldn't give up our dreams and careers and jump on the baby fever bandwagon, but a little education and information never hurt anyone. Because even if you can't imagine having children in your life, you don't really know how you'll feel in 10 or 15 years. (After all, some of us have said we'd "never ever" do a lot of stuff that we eventually did, like anal sex, for example.) If women have this knowledge at a younger age, when their eggs are still viable and not "dry and crusty" like Alexis Stewart's, then maybe they can plan better for the future. (Or not. Freezing and storing eggs is expensive: the process costs between $9,000 and $15,000, and about $350 and $500 a year for storage.)

For now, Stewart is treating her infertility like a job (the apple doesn't fall far from the tree), and will weigh her other options when her doctors tell her it's time to move on. But she said that even Martha thinks she was "silly for waiting."

Alexis Stewart Continues Fertility Treatments [People]

• It's not looking too good for Republican folks in Washington. [Washington Post]

• But at least Jenna and Henry don't live in Iraq, where many women have been forced to sell their bodies in order to feed their kids. [CNN]
• And we know Jenna wants kids. Assuming she can have them. Let's hope she's not infertile. Because IVF could bring up some pretty big issues for her. [Salon]
• Also, we hope both she and Henry are prepared for the fact that they are not going to be having a ton of sex in the future. According to the Red Hot Mamas organization's Sex and Menopause Survey, over half of women report a decrease in sex drive during menopause, and 44% report suffering from vaginal atrophy—their vaginas just like, dry up and it hurts too much to have sex. Ugh. [Reuters]