Roundup: Women at Risk for HIV, When Pregnancy Begins, Ab-Only Out of Tune with Teens, and It’s World Breastfeeding Week

The CDC's methodology misses women at risk for HIV, pregnancy begins at implantation for good reason, teens don't speak ab-only, and activism for World Breastfeeding Week.

CDC’s Methodology Misses Women at Risk for HIV

Don Bruner and Jackie Dozier of the Black Men Latino Men Health Crisis and the Women HIV/AIDS Initiatives have
called
attention to
the CDC’s "outdated" definitions of the groups most at risk
for HIV infection, noting that the women who are contracting one-third of all
new HIV infections don’t fit into those historically high-risk groups,
including men who have sex with men, IV drug users, transplant recipients,
among others. Bruner and Dozier write, "For
women, the result of this flawed methodology is devastating. Too many women are
left uninformed of their HIV status, lacking proper care and unable to reduce
transmission to others."

Rewire’s coverage of the XVII International AIDS Conference
in Mexico City

includes accounts from advocates pushing attention to women’s health and vulnerability to HIV, including:

 

Why Pregnancy Begins at Implantation

On ScienceProgress,
Jessica Arons takes a close look why medical consensus has determined that pregnancy
begins at implantation — unsurprisingly, for good scientific reasons. Firstly, there is no way to tell that a woman is
pregnant prior to implantation; her body does not offer any measurable signals.
If the existence of pregnancy can’t be determined, well, then, "we can treat all women as
potentially pregnant — and refuse them access to drugs and devices that would
help them prevent pregnancy."

Second, Arons points out, from one-third to one-half of all fertilized eggs
never manage to implant. And
even if you could detect an embryo prior to implantation, when would this
storied moment of conception take place?

The process of fertilization itself
can take up to 24 hours.
The zygote then begins to divide and differentiate into the preembryo and
travels down the fallopian tubes toward the uterus. Implantation of the
preembryo into the uterine lining typically begins about 5 days after
fertilization and will be completed between 8 and 18 days after fertilization.
Thus, despite the assertions of social conservatives, there is no one "moment"
of conception.

Teens Don’t Speak Ab-Only

Abstinence-only curricula may position sexual activity and
abstinence as opposites, but few teens think that way, University of Washington
researcher Tatiana Masters has found. ScienceDaily
describes Masters’s findings:

Rather than being an either or choice, she said,
a teenager’s decision to become sexually active can be likened to getting on an
escalator. At first, adolescents don’t think about sex very much. Once they
step on the escalator the first step is abstinence. Then as they begin to be
aware of sex, there are other steps and choices to be made that eventually lead
to having intercourse.

"With these programs you often hear ‘sex just happens’
and adolescents are having less safe sex," says Masters. "This detracts from
adolescents having a choice, and this leads to more dangerous sex with more
sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies."

Activism for World Breastfeeding Week

World Breastfeeding Week is wrapping up, and the Daily Women’s
Health Policy Report has highlighted
some of the latest US breastfeeding activism —
including a new Colorado law requiring that employers give their employees time
and private space to breastfeed infants; breastfeeding education campaigns in
Kentucky; and the push for a new Breastfeeding Bill of Rights in New York City.

Parting Shot

"In a consumer age, the potlatch wedding takes on the role of church and
state and tradition in a prior age. Having done away with the
sacrament, the covenant or the consequences, all we know anymore is the
story, and we’re hoping it’s good enough." That’s Linda Hirshman on Broadsheet.