It's been exactly a year since Michelle Promaulayko became editor-in-chief of the women's spinoff Rodale launched in 2005. I've never met Promaulayko, and a spokeswoman said she wouldn't be available in time to comment on this, and I'm sure she's a very nice person. But the still-successful Cosmo business model is as follows: on the circulation side, huge newsstand sales achieved mostly through sexed-up cover lines, and on the advertising side, a cozy relationship with the beauty industry. Great for profits, bad for anyone looking for an unpatronizing read on health and fitness.

When Women's Health launched, there was reason to believe that the magazine would break the mold. The pages were information-dense, sometimes too much so, and there was a robust, slightly smart-ass energy that belied the faux you-go-girl tone of its competitors. There were fitness models on the cover, so there was no need to pretend that a micro-starlet with a project to plug actually had something to say about a healthy lifestyle. The magazine covered beauty back then too, but it also did reported pieces on hospital safety and travel stories on fly fishing. And it ran things like this:

(The caption reads, "We'll be kick-ass grannies.")

And this:

Even before hiring Promaulayko, editorial director Dave Zinczenko's fondness for all things Cosmo was well-documented. And when it comes to currying favor with the beauty industry, Zinczenko does not discriminate: He used the same strategy to beef up Men's Health's advertising base by creating the Men's Health Grooming Awards in 2007, and was rewarded with beauty advertising growing 45.8 percent for that issue, according to WWD.

Launch editor-in-chief Tina Johnson left Women's Health abruptly in August 2008, after which Zinczenko took over. Like Men's Health before it, Women's Health joined the celebrity cover game, starting with Elizabeth Banks. When Promaulayko was hired away from her longtime gig at Cosmo it was with the specific mission of beefing up fashion and beauty. She brought in top editors from the Cosmo family. Out: the tomboyish verve. In: eating licorice wrapped around your partner's penis (actual June 2009 sex tip), page after page of beauty product placements (including a 25-page beauty package in the April 2009 issue), and Ashlee Simpson on the December 2009 cover, on how she - you guessed it - lost the baby weight.

So far, by conventional standards, her strategy has worked: The magazine was AdAge's Magazine of the Year, Its advertising numbers are less crappy than everyone else's. It has several books planned. The circulation is climbing to 1.5 million, close to beating its more established brother, so apparently there are still plenty of people who want to read it.

Just not the readers who turned to it for a fresh take — some of them complaining about the dumbing down of the content on the magazine's own site. Count me among them.

Women's Health [Official Site]

Related: Rodale Taps Editor For Women's Health [WWD]
Women's Health: Magazine Of The Year [AdAge]

[Mexico City, September 28. Image via Getty]

Women march in Mexico City in support of abortion, on the 'Day of Decriminalization of Abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean' on September 28, 2009. AFP PHOTO/Alfredo ESTRELLA (Photo credit should read ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images)

Operation Rescue, the group founded by Randall Terry, who said of the murder of late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller earlier this summer that he "reaped what he sowed" will be at Carhart's clinic today and tomorrow. Carhart appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show last night to discuss the threats. He said he isn't canceling any appointments.

The resurgence of threats against abortion doctors and clinics (and by extension the women who go to those clinics) is a sign of an increasingly frustrated group of extreme pro-lifers. At the time of Tiller's murder earlier this summer, Cara at Feministe wrote, "This is the first time an abortion provider has been murdered in over a decade. I have friends who work in abortion clinics. This is terrorism."

The reluctance of the government to call the threats against law-abiding citizens and doctors is disturbing. Donald Hertz, the man in Spokane accused of making threats against Hern across state lines, faces up to six years in prison and a $350,000 if he's convicted. That certainly isn't an insignificant threat of punishment, but it certainly isn't on the level of what others accused of terrorism face. What's more, after Hertz posted bail on Wednesday, he was released.

Meanwhile, an ad in a Chinese newspaper offers "students who come to get an abortion can get 50% off if they show their student ids," something that rubbed some readers the wrong way.

But other readers pointed out that in America the debate has become so framed by anti-abortion protesters that women are "expected to treat abortions as necessary tragedies." Abortion is legal and widely accessible in China, costing about 600 yuan, or $88.

In America, by contrast, about 86% of counties don't have an abortion provider, 24 states require some kind of waiting period before an abortion, and the number of abortion providers has dropped significantly since the violence against providers in the 1990s. As a recent profile of Carhart in Newsweek points out:

A wave of anti-abortion violence in the 1990s-three doctors killed in five years-coincided with a dramatic drop in providers, from 2,680 in 1985 to 1,787 in 2005. Carhart worries that if he and other doctors retreat, Tiller will have the same legacy.

Man Arrested In Threats To Colorado Abortion Clinic [NYT]
Chinese Abortion Ad: Is It Crossing The Line? [SFGate]

Related: Abortion Provider Dr. Tiller Shot Dead at Wichita Church [Feministe]
The Last Abortion Doctor [Esquire]
Randall Terry: Tiller "Reaped What He Sowed," I Won't Tone Down Rhetoric [Huffington Post]
The Abortion Evangelist [Newsweek]

[Philadelphia, August 12. Image via Getty]

PHILADELPHIA - AUGUST 12: Attendees wait in line for a town hall meeting being held by U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) August 12, 2009 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Sestak, who has announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate against incumbent Democrat Arlen Specter, organized the town hall meeting to speak about health care reform. (Photo by Jeff Fusco/Getty Images)

In a Today Show segment worthy of The Onion, a bemused-looking Ann Curry interviews Women's Health editor Michele Promaulayko and Dr. Shari Lusskin of NYU on this supposed phenomenon. Says Promaulayko (a former editor of Cosmo who once pumped her staff for more stories in the "dead bridesmaid" vein),

Big families are having a moment right now, it's very much in the zeitgeist.

After this little game of buzzword madlibs, Promaulayko continues,

There is sort of an addictive quality to being pregnant, there are a lot of things happening physiologically and psychologically that would drive a woman to keep doing this.

There is, of course, always the chance that women are getting pregnant to have more kids, instead of to feed their addiction to bumpahol. Ann Curry asks Dr. Lusskin when we should be concerned about a woman's rampant spawning. Lusskin says,

We're concerned about this when women are doing it to the exclusion of the other factors in their life, in other words that drive to become pregnant just supersedes everything else, almost like Species, you know that movie?

Got it — so when women transform into alien-human hybrids who need human sperm in order to perpetuate their race of killer tentacle-beasts, it's time to worry. There's a lot more fun stuff in the clip, including Dr. Lusskin grinning maniacally as she discusses post-partum depression, but to see if there was a grain of truth behind all this hysteria, we looked at the original Women's Health article that inspired the Today Show segment. Called "The Belly-Rubbing High," it's written by Martha Brockenbrough, who also penned It Could Happen to You: Diary of a Pregnancy and Beyond (obviously an addiction memoir). The article includes several head-splittingly obvious statements like, "Having babies isn't addictive in the way that alcohol and narcotics can be," and requisite namechecks of various big families (the Octomom! The Duggars!). But it also offers this advice:

If you do find yourself feeling a void as your bundle of joy becomes a toddler, "that's a good sign that it's time to look in the mirror and figure out what's going on with you," says Ann Pleshette Murphy, author of The Seven Stages of Motherhood: Loving Your Life Without Losing Your Mind. "Invest in yourself. Though it may never be as satisfying as what we get from taking care of our kids, it's important to feel proud of something you do outside of child-rearing so that you don't think of yourself as 'only a mom.'"

Really? Investing in yourself may never be as satisfying as taking care of your kids? And yet, when taking care of said kids, you're in danger of feeling like 'only a mom?' If there really are women who are addicted to being pregnant (and Ann Curry, to her credit, doubts this is very common), might it have something to do with this double-edged sword? Once you have a baby, you're expected to think of raising it as more important than your own life, but at the same time you're at the mercy of those who think of child-rearing as an inferior activity. For some, pregnancy might be a respite from this conflict, a time to anticipate the joy of a child without yet dealing with the difficulties of being a mom (although pregnant women do get plenty of judgment about what they eat, drink, wear, etc.). Brockenbrough closes her article thus:

"Me time" can include big things-like going back to work or starting your own business from home-or small, daily experiences that enrich your life, such as heading to the gym or joining your girlfriends for dinner and cocktails. It's only when you have a balanced life that you can be sure the inner call for a new addition to your family should be answered.

If some women really do have a problematic relationship with pregnancy and childbearing, maybe the solution isn't to tell them when they should have kids (what is "a balanced life" anyway?). Maybe we should quit sending them mixed messages, quit judging and second-guessing them, and just leave them the fuck alone.

"Bumpaholics": Women Who Love Pregnancy [MSNBC]
The Belly-Rubbing High [Women's Health]

[Mexico City, June 17. Image via Getty]

Mexican women carry out a performance against an abortion law at the Zocalo square in Mexico City, on June 17, 2009. Twelve Mexican states recently passed a law that forbids abortion. AFP PHOTO/Luis Acosta (Photo credit should read LUIS ACOSTA/AFP/Getty Images)

Northrup says that uterine fibroids may "result when we are flowing life energy into dead end jobs or relationships we have outgrown." She also says that for breast health, women should imagine their chests "bathed in the golden white light of healing" and "express all emotions fully." PalMD writes,

There is something fundamentally misogynist about Northrup's approach. In addition to being complete fantasy, it is part of the punitive culture of so-called alternative medicine. According to people like her, if a woman is just happy enough, satisfied enough, spiritual enough, then she won't be unhealthy. So what happens if you get sick? Well, you must not have been good enough. It's not like that's a new message for women.

Who Does Oprah Go To For Women's Health Advice? [ScienceBlogs]

Lawrence, Kansas. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)


Lawrence, Kansas. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)


Wichita, Kansas. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner)


Lawrence, Kansas. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)


Wichita, Kansas, Sunday. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner)


Lawrence, Kansas, Sunday. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)


Wichita, Kansas. (Photo by Kelly Glasscock/Getty Images)


Wichita, Kansas. (Photo by Kelly Glasscock/Getty Images)


Lawrence, Kansas. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)


Wichita, Kansas. (Photo by Kelly Glasscock/Getty Images)


Lawrence, Kansas. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)


Wichita, Kansas. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner)


Wichita, Kansas. (Photo by Kelly Glasscock/Getty Images)


Earlier: George Tiller, Late-Term Abortion Provider, Shot & Killed At Church

The 23-minute film by Lisa Russell, which is available for viewing online, follows two young women who are seeking safe abortions after being assaulted. The film was produced by Ipas, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to preventing deaths and disabilities from unsafe abortions. According to the organization, 67,000 women die every year from unsafe abortions across the world, and more than half of the deaths occur in Africa.

In 2004 the Ethiopian Parliament approved a new law legalizing abortion for minors, women who have been raped, and cases in which the mother's life is in danger. However, due to a lack of supplies and education, legal abortions are still extremely hard to come by. In Ethiopia unsafe abortions, including ingesting herbs and placing objects in the uterus, are still the second leading cause of death for women of child-bearing age.

Tigist, who is now 20, was raped while working in a tea room by a man whose marriage proposal she refused. When her employer found out, she was kicked out of her home and lost her job. In the clip above, she seeks treatment at a local health center, but is told the facility can only perform the abortion in the first trimester, and she is three months and 15 days pregnant.

Eventually, she gets an abortion at a regional hospital. In an interview posted on Shakesville, filmmaker Lisa Russell said, "Tigist life will has changed remarkably after having the procedure. She can go on to get a job, get an education, and pursue her goals."

Saba Kidanemariam, who works at Ipas Ethiopia says in the documentary that she doesn't feel that if a young woman gets pregnant she should be blamed because society has failed her. "Maybe the information she needs she is not getting, services she might need, she is not getting," says Kidanemariam. "Society is responsible for this. It should have been her right to get services, to get information, and to live as a person is entitled."

Watch Not Yet Rain [NotYetRain.org]
Not Yet Rain Debut And Interview With Filmmaker [Shakesville]
Not Yet Rain [Feministe]

This isn't the first time we've heard that pap smears may be on their way out, but the results of the study of 130,000 women in India have put "another nail in the coffin" for Pap smears, as Stanford professor of gynecology Dr. Paul D. Blumenthal puts it in The New York Times. Scientists say that the new test could replace cruder screening methods in poor countries and allow women over 30 in wealthy countries to drop annual Pap smears and have a DNA test once every 3, 5, or 10 years.

The new study divided healthy Indian women between the ages of 30 and 59 into four groups. One group got the usual rural care, which is just advice to go to a hospital if they wanted screening. Another group got a "visualization" test, typical in poorer countries, in which a health worker looks at the cervix with a flashlight and swabs it with vinegar. Any white spots that develop may be precancerous lesions, so they are frozen off. A third group got pap smears and the fourth got a DNA test. For both tests cells are scraped from the cervix, but for the Pap test the cells are examined by a pathologist in lab and the results take days, while the DNA test can be read by a machine within hours.

After eight years, the control group and the visualization group had the same rates of cervical cancer and death, while the Pap-smear group had three-fourths the rates. Women who had the DNA test had half the rates of cancer and death, but none of the women who were negative on their DNA test died of cervical cancer.

Qiagen, the company that makes the DNA test, has developed a $5 version for use in poor countries that runs on batteries and doesn't require water or refrigeration. If a woman was tested just once every ten years and her results were negative, the chances that she would develop cancer would be low. In countries where women are hesitant to get pelvic exams, doctors say they test would still work if the women took the vaginal swab themselves.

Currently in poorer countries cervical cancer kills more than 250,000 woman a year. In the U.S. the cancer was a leading cause of death in the 1950s, but now it kills fewer than 4,000 women a year. In Europe most women don't start having Pap smears until 30, but the American Cancer society currently recommends that woman start yearly testing three years after they have sex, or no later than 21. After several normal results they may start testing only every three years. There are 150 strains of the human papillomavirus and cervical cancer is caused by only a few. Women pick up strains when they start having sex but most cases clear up on their own in about two years, and it's rare that the cancer would develop in under 15 years.

In 2002, the cancer society and the American College of Obstretricians and Gynocologists began recommending the HPV test as well and there is increasing evidence that the Pap smear is no longer necessary. "But we haven't been able to get doctors to go along," Dr. Debbie Salsow of the American Cancer Society said. "The average gynecologist, especially the older ones, says, ‘Women come in for their Pap smear, and that's how we get them in here to get other care.' We're totally overscreening, but when you've been telling everyone for 40 years to get an annual Pap smear, it's hard to change."

[Image via morgueFile.]

DNA Test Outperforms Pap Smear [The New York Times]
Cervical Cancer: Prevention And Early Detection [The American Cancer Society]

Earlier: New Study Suggests Pap Smears May Be Thing Of The Past

Casey Schwartz writes for The Daily Beast:

Studies suggest that changes in the state of the economy can influence what men find sexually attractive in women— and when the economy's bad, it's good to be fat. Or, at least, a tiny bit fatter.

Researchers polled students about the size of their ideal woman. Male subjects who were made to feel insecure about their finances reported a preference for women who were, on average, roughly two pounds heavier than their financially confident counterparts. Subjects on their way to lunch wanted a woman who was three pounds heavier than guys quizzed when they were full. Whether or not any of this actually translate into the real world, whether or not dudes are actually accepting of women with three pounds more on their frames is not the point. This story is designed, really, to make a woman carrying some extra weight feel a little better. Like her time has come. And in a world where we're bombarded with diet ads and skinny models, some soothing is welcome. (Schwartz writes: "Pass the enchiladas.")

But on the other hand, Mindy Laube penned a scathing piece for a blog associated with Aussie paper The Age, in which she writes, "The human body is meant to be lean and fit." She claims "the fat lobby" attempts to "re-rate our body shape standards to suit an unattractive mean."

The average Australian woman is 5'4" (163 centimetres) and a size 14. These dimensions may be typical but they do not make a woman normal, they make her FAT. […] A fat body is not a normal body. It's an aberration that we countenance to the detriment of our looks, health and self-esteem. Shifting the aesthetic goal posts to normalise a disproportionately high fat-to-muscle ratio on the basis of that figure type's ubiquity is equivalent to rewriting home building regulations to accommodate shoddy workmanship. Prevalence is no justification for acceptance.

Laube references the bestseller Why French Women Don't Get Fat and argues that the real reason French women are not chubby is because they don't let themselves get fat. "French women - and men - prize looks and style over gluttony and sloth," she says. Don't you love it when being fat is equated with being lazy?

While it's true that humans were not designed to eat fast food and sit at a desk all day, this is the reality we live in. Times have changed, so the human body has changed. And some of the most industrious, hard-working people are overweight. Our environment is not what it was in the 1950s, so why should our waistline be?

So which is it? Should overweight women be proud and happy of their size, especially in a recession? And since each generation keeps getting bigger and bigger, will we eventually have an "average" size that is 20 or 24? (Wall-E, anyone?) And is there anything wrong with that? Or is the average (overweight) woman doing herself — and the world — an injustice by keeping the pounds on?

Hot And Heavy [The Daily Beast]
The Pudgy Country [The Age]

The price of birth control at family planning clinics and college health centers shot up following the passage of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, a federal law designed to save taxpayers money on Medicaid reimbursements for drugs reports U.S. News and World Report. The bill dissuaded drug companies from offering discounts to clinics, and for the past two years many women have been paying up to 10 times more each month for contraception.

Most clinics began offering cheaper generic versions of birth control pills, but there's no generic version of NuvaRing or the patch. Some colleges stopped offering hormonal contraceptives because they could not afford to keep a supply.

The "Affordable Birth Control Act," which was passed by the Senate earlier this week, was signed into law as part of the 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Bill. It allows pharmaceutical companies to offer the discounts again at no cost to taxpayers, but there's no guarantee that they will reduce their prices. When asked if it would cut prices, a spokeswoman for Schering-Plough, which makes NuvaRing, said, "We're looking into it. It's something we would definitely like to support." Even if companies do decide to offer discounts again, the cheaper birth control probably won't be available to students until next year because clinics still need to renegotiate their contracts with drug companies and sell off their old supplies.

Planned Parenthood issued a statement praising Congress for passing the bill, saying, "We applaud Congress for righting a wrong that has restricted access to basic but critical preventive health care services, and left millions of women at risk of unintended pregnancy." Planned Parenthood and several other women's health groups have been lobbying Congress to reverse the 2005 bill, organizing petition drives and meeting with members of Congress.

As part of the campaign, Planned Parenthood organized a meeting between Senator Harry Reid and Nonie Wainwright, a University of Nevada graduate affected by the bill. Wainwright wrote a blog post last week about the meeting, saying, "It was a little intimidating to talk to a U.S. senator about birth control, but Sen. Reid was great." Wainwright explained that, in addition to preventing pregnancy, as a competitive swimmer, birth control helps her regulate her cycle and compete year round. In 2006 her monthly prescription went from $15 a month to $50. "I recall having to decide between paying for groceries or for birth control - decisions no male athlete would ever have to make," she said.

Cheap Birth Control (Once Again) For College Women [U.S. News And World Report]
Spending Bill Reduces Cost Of Birth Control Pills On Campus [U.S. News and World Report]
Planned Parenthood Press Release [Planned Parenthood]
Nonie Wainwright's Blog [RH Reality Check]

Specifically, the women were 58 percent more likely to die from cardiovascular disease and 59 percent more likely to die from non-cardiovascular, non-cancer causes. For the study, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, researchers studied 8,101 Caucasian women over age 69 for seven years. The researchers also found that older woman who slept 9-10 hours a day had a higher mortality rate than those who slept 8-9 hours per day. Yet, study co-author Katie L. Stone said that older people shouldn't avoid napping. "Since excessive sleep suggests that night time sleep is disrupted, interventions to treat sleep disorders and improve sleep quality in older women may reduce mortality risk," said Stone. [UPI]

[Image via Flickr.]

University of Pittsburgh researchers studied data from the Women's Health Initiative, an ongoing study of 100,000 women over 50 that started in 1994. Time reports that at the beginning of the study, participants were asked to respond to whether they agreed with statement like "In uncertain times, I expect the worst." Eight years later, researchers examined the women's death rates and found that those who were optimistic were 14% more likely to be alive than the pessimists. Research showed that the difference between optimists and pessimists was even more pronounced among black women. While white pessimists were 13% more likely to have died eight years into the study, pessimistic black women were 33% more likely to have died.

While there have been other studies on optimism, health and lifestyle variables were eliminated more comprehensively in this study than in the past, so that optimism could be looked at on its own. Dr. Hilary Tindle, lead author of the study, tells Time:

Taking into account income, education, health behaviors like [controlling] blood pressure and whether or not you are physically active, whether or not you drink or smoke, we still see optimists with a decreased risk of death compared to pessimists ... I was surprised that the relationship was independent of all of these factors.

Researchers are not entirely sure what caused the results. Tindle suggests that it may be due to optimistic people having more friends and therefore more people to rely on, or following medical advice more closely. She says it's possible that optimists have a physiological makeup that helps them manage stress better. While being optimistic may not hurt, the research only found that it is associated with longevity, not a direct cause, so if you want to maintain your cynical ways it probably won't kill you.

[Image via stock.xhng.]
Study: Optimistic Women Live Longer

University of Utah researchers asked 276 couples who had been married for 20 years to answer questions about their relationship and studied their health, reports Reuters. The women with strained marriages were more prone to depression and metabolic syndrome, which includes the symptoms of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, thick waist, and abnormal blood sugar. Medical researchers still debate whether these factors should be grouped together as a single syndrome, but, as Live Science explains, researchers chose to study them because there is no question that these symptoms are linked to heart disease.

Scientists found that, although men in marriages with a high level of conflict may be depressed, they do not show increased symptoms of metabolic syndrome. Doctors expected that stress in relationships would translate into mental and physical problems for both sexes, and were surprised by the results because heart disease is the number one killer of both men and women. Researchers said they need to learn more about the connection between heart health and emotional distress, but that for now it makes more sense for women to focus on traditional factors known to influence heart health. "There is good evidence they [women] should modify some of the things that affect metabolic syndrome – like diet and exercise," said Professor Tim Smith, who co-lead the research, "but it's a little premature to say they would lower their risk of heart disease if they improved the tone and quality of their marriages – or dumped their husbands."

[Image via eHow.]

A Strained Marriage Can Hurt The Heart [Reuters]
Bad Marriages Strain Women's Hearts, But Not Men's [Live Science]

Hysterectomies are the second most common surgical procedure for women of reproductive age (the first being cesarean sections). By the age of 60, nearly a third of all American woman will have had the surgery. It is estimated that 600,000 hysterectomies are performed in the U.S. each year, giving America one of the highest hysterectomy rates. Some argue that American doctors are way too likely to chose a hysterectomy over alternative procedures, and that up to two thirds of the women who received hysterectomies did not actually need them.

There is also some debate among doctors over what exactly needs to be removed during a hysterectomy. While most doctors remove the cervix along with the uterus, experts assert that doing so may increase the risk of damage to the bladder and nearby nerves. Just as important is the possibility that preserving the cervix may allow many women to enjoy better post-procedure sex lives:

Some researchers believe that for at least some women, the cervix may contribute to sexual pleasure; doctors also say leaving it in place makes it easier to avoid unwittingly shortening the vaginal canal. A 212-patient Finnish study from 1983 found pain upon intercourse pre-hysterectomy was better relieved by a cervix-sparing procedure. A parallel study, involving the same women, found the frequency of orgasms decreased in women who had their cervix removed but not in those who didn't.

However, these claims are not without controversy. Some doctors still believe that there is no solid reason to spare the cervix, and that removing the cervix can help patients avoid cancer, frequent pap smears, and spotting.

A similar question has been raised about the preservation of the ovaries, reports Newsweek. Two new studies suggest that, among women with stage one endometrial cancer, there are similar survival rates for those who have their ovaries removed along with the uterus, and those who choose to keep their ovaries. There may also be health benefits to keeping the ovaries intact: estrogen produced by the ovaries can help protect against heart disease and thinning bones. Furthermore, women who had their ovaries removed before menopause have a greater chance of developing dementia or other memory problems.

Dr. Seth Kivnick from the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in West Los Angeles stresses the importance of letting a woman decide for herself whether or not she would like to keep her cervix: "When you give women the choice, and you tell them the pros and cons, many of them find the idea of keeping the cervix very appealing."

The Debate Over Sparing the Cervix In Hysterectomies [WSJ]
Female Trouble [Newsweek]
Experts: Two-thirds Of Hysterectomies Unnecessary [CNN]

Image via Elite Choice