Category Archives: Human Reproduction

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This story was originally published by Hakai Magazineandis reproduced here as part of theClimate Deskcollaboration.

Wearing a navy-blue polo neck emblazoned with the Florida Aquarium logo, Keri ONeil hugs a white cooler at Miami International Airport. Coral babieeeeees, she says, before letting out a short laugh. Relief. The container holds 10 plastic bottles teeming with thousands of tiny peach-colored specks. Shaped like cornflakes and no more than a millimeter in length, they are the larvae of elkhorn coral, an endangered species that is as characteristic to the reefs of the Florida Keys and the Caribbean as polar bears are to the Arctic or giant sequoias to Sierra Nevada.

With the larvae kept at 27 C inside their insulated cooler nestled in the trunk of her car, ONeil drives back to the Florida Aquarium in Tampa, where she works as senior coral scientist at the aquariums Center for Conservation. Once there, the larvae begin their metamorphosis from free-swimming specks into settled polyps, the beginnings of those branching, antler-like shapes that define this species. ONeil and her colleagues provide everything the coral needs for a strong start in life: warm water with a gentle flow, symbiotic algae that find a home inside the corals cells, a soft glow of sunlight, and some ceramic squares seasoned with algae that act as landing pads for the larvae.

The transformation of larvae into polyps was the final step in a coral breeding project that began on the shores of Curaao, an island off the coast of Venezuela, in the summer of 2018 and involved a cadre of conservationists and scientists who each specialize in one specific stage of coral development. From collection of eggs during mass spawning events to the cryopreservation of sperm, and from fertilization to larval growth, every step had to go swimmingly for the project to have any chance of success.

Its like the most stressful relay on Earth, says Kristen Marhaver, a coral scientist at the Caribbean Research and Management of Biodiversity Foundation in Curaao, who helped start this relay race by collecting eggs during a nighttime dive at a reef thats a 45-minute drive from her laboratory. As ONeil was picking up her coral babies in Miami, a second team of scientists at Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium in Sarasota, Florida, received its own. The pressure on both labs was immense. To fail now would be to drop the baton just before the final straight.

But, if anything, their efforts were too successful; hundreds of larvae settled as translucent and fragile blobs of tissue (each a single polyp) and then started to divide, branching into the clear waters of their shallow, open-top tanks. Elkhorn coral grows an average of five to 10 centimeters per year, a bamboo-like pace for corals in general. To stop them becoming entangled, ONeil had to cut, separate, and move her colonies to different paddle poolsized tanks over the course of the next year. We almost ended up with a six-foot-by-four-foot solid piece of elkhorn coral made up of 400 different individuals, she says. They were just outgrowing the tanks.

A juvenile elkhorn coral colony, about six months old, gets its start in a lab at the Florida Aquarium in Tampa. The eggs came from coral in Curaao and the sperm from coral elsewhere in the Caribbeanpopulations that, under normal circumstances, would not have mixed in the wild.

Kristen Marhaver

The rows of coral in ONeils tanks are a window into a former world. The reefs of the Florida Keys were once dominated by elkhorn coral. Visiting these islands that curl southward from Florida like the tip of a bird of preys beak, biologist, conservationist, and writermost notably ofSilent Spring, but also of several books on the oceanRachel Carson peered into the shallows using a water glass, an instrument akin to a glass-bottom bucket. Through this simple portal, she saw great stands of trees of stone, a forest of coral. Today, after decades of disease, coastal development, and bleaching, over 95 percent of the states elkhorn coral have been lost.

This population isnt just depleted in number, like a forest thats been felled, but is also impoverished from within. Some reefs in the Keys descend from a single individual that has reproduced via fragmentationbits break off the parent coral and start a new colony. This mode of reproduction allows corals to spread, but without the genetic mixing that comes with sex, these clones are more susceptible to disturbances such as disease.

The coral larvae raised by ONeil at the Florida Aquarium are different; they are the product of sperm and egg, a shuffling of genes, and the growth of genetically unique clumps of coral. Reintroducing them could provide a boost to the corals genetic diversitya quick stir to the gene pooland could save a denuded ecosystem. Their reintroduction could also spell its doom.

Hidden inside the genetic code of the Florida Aquariums coral is a map of an atypical origin: the eggs collected from Curaao were fertilized using sperm from the Caribbean, including Florida. Although the same species (Acropora palmata), these coral populations would never breed in the wild. The distance between the two is hundreds of kilometers and contains the island blockade of the Greater Antillesan impossible journey for any sperm. The coral housed in the Florida Aquarium are the products of human hands, the latest addition to a recentand often controversialtrend in conservation known as assisted gene flow, shuttling existing genetic diversity to new places.

Elkhorn coral spawn only once a year, triggered by the full moon, but estimating the exact time and date of the spawn is tricky. Scientists in Curaao dove for more than 40 nights before the elkhorn coral they were monitoring finally released their eggs.

Smithsonian National Zoo

No hands have offered more assistance to these coral than those of Mary Hagedorn, senior research scientist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, who is based at the University of Hawaii at Mnoa. Hagedorn flew to the Caribbean to guide this project from start to finish. It is her research that made this work possible. Since 2004, she has developed cryopreservation techniques that can freeze coral sperm andjust as importantlykeep them fertile upon thawing.

Although cryopreservation has been used for IVF in humans and other mammals for decades, its only in the last few years that other coral conservationists have adopted Hagedorns techniques for coral sperm. At a time when these methodologies are most needed, Hagedorns work has matured into a solid science, says Tom Moore, a coral restoration manager at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at the time of this project and now in the private sector. I think were going to start seeing a lot more of this done in the course of the next few years.

Without the option to freeze sperm, coral conservationists have been forced to work within the few hours these sex cells remain viable. In Florida, Moore says, scientists from the Lower Keys would drive north to meet colleagues from the Upper Keys and swap sperm samples on the side of the road, fertilizing eggs there and then before the sperm stopped swimming. With the option to freeze sperm using liquid nitrogen, however, samples can be transported long distancesfrom Florida to Curaao, for example. Then, when eggs are collected from the reef, the sperm can be thawed and used in concentrations that make fertilization most likely. Hagedorns work opens up new possibilities that, just a few years ago, were largely ignored.

Kendall Fitzgerald, left, and Claire Lager, of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, use cryopreservation techniques to conserve coral as part of a global biorepository.

Smithsonian National Zoo

Self-funded for many years, Hagedorns research was nearly stopped altogether in December 2011. Her savings had run out and funders didnt seem to see the potential of her work. I was a month away from closing my lab, she says. Then she received an unexpected call from the Roddenberry Foundation, a philanthropic organization set up in memory of Gene Roddenberry, the writer ofStar Trek. Since Hagedorns work fit the criteria for bold and unique science, the foundation wanted to fund her research for five years. Since then, her work has grown to include frozen larvae, frozen coral symbiotic algae, and frozen coral fragments, and it has been adopted by labs around the world. To help her cryopreservation methods spread, Hagedorn runs workshops and shares her techniques freely; the instructions to build her equipment can be downloaded and then manufactured with a 3D printer.

As with IVF in humans, coral fertilization is not a perfect science. In a study published in 2017, Hagedorn and her colleagues showed that fertilization rates from frozen coral sperm are significantly lower than from fresh sperm, roughly 50 percent versus over 90 percent. And these figures were based on coral that lived as neighbors on the same reef. The researchers wanted to increase genetic diversity in the future (through assisted gene flow), but it was still unknown whether populations that had been isolated for thousands of years could produce viable offspring, especially after their sperm had been frozen. The idea to breed elkhorn coral from the Florida Keys with those from Curaao was the most extreme test yet of Hagedorns methods. It was a moonshot for coral conservation, says ONeil. We wanted to do something that had never been done before.

Marhaver thought that they had a five to 10 percent chance of success. To have hundreds of healthy coral now sitting in tanks barely crossed her mind. Conservationists are more attuned to the vibrations of endangerment, extinction, and loss. To have a moonshot succeed is unfamiliar territory. With the impossible now possible, the next hurdle is moving from the lab to the ocean, a leap that not everyone is comfortable with.

As in medical practice, the first rule of restoring ailing ecosystems isprimum non nocere, first, do no harm. And what concerns Lisa Gregg, program and policy coordinator at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), the organization that decides the fate of the Florida-Curaao coral, is that they arent suited to the local conditions of the Florida Keys, a place that Carson referred to as having an atmosphere that is strongly and peculiarly [its] own.

These islands are formed from sedimentation, while those of Curaao and the eastern Caribbean are founded on volcanic activity. Plus, the Florida Keys also have their own unique combination of problems, from infectious disease to coastal development, and from hurricanes to coral bleaching. We have a lot of problems here, says ONeil. And it is quite likely that the corals that are still alive in Florida after everything thats happened to them are probably the ones that are best suited to living in Florida and providing offspring that may be capable of surviving in Florida.

If Curaao genes were introduced, they might lead to lower rates of reproduction, shorter life spans, or lowered resistance to local diseases. Imperceptible at first, such outbreeding depression can slowly weaken a population, generation by generation. To introduce genes that havent experienced the same history could be a ratchet toward extinction.

The risk of such outbreeding depression is very low, howevera doomsday forecast for Floridas reefs, many conservationists think. Im not so concerned that theres a huge risk of the Curaao [genes] causing a major detriment to the native Florida population, says Iliana Baums, head of marine conservation and restoration at the University of Oldenburg, Germany, who has studied elkhorn coral since 1998. But thats based on my knowledge of the literature for other species and modeling and so on. I dont have any direct evidence for that. Direct evidence would require reintroduction, a catch-22 of conservation; the very thing that is controversial and potentially dangerous is also the route to understanding.

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These Scientists Tried a Coral-Breeding Moonshotand It Worked Mother Jones - Mother Jones

By DAVID DUPONT

BG Independent News

Even before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Junereproductive freedom advocates were in action spelling out what to do when the anticipate decision was handed down.

Then on June 24, they had to spring into action.

Protests began.

Hannah Servidio, of Pro-Choice Ohio, said Thursday an educational session proceeding a rally on the BGSU campus because Ohio did not have a trigger law that put restrictions into place as soon as the Supreme Court ruled. Those had been proposed, but had yet to pass the legislature and be signed by Gov. Mike DeWine.

It so-called six-week abortion ban was tied up in the courts.

Then Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost successfully petitioned the court to lift the stay, and at 6 p.m. that day the six-week ban was in place.

Abortion clinic personnel started calling patients who were scheduled to have abortions the next day that they may not be able to have the procedure done.

The implementation of that law, however, has been put on hold based on a ruling in Hamilton County. But that stay is temporary, though clinics and the ACLU are trying to make it indefinite.

So abortions continue in Ohios nine clinics for now, Servidio said.

But that future is clouded.

Even beyond the complications posed by the government, those seeking abortions face a host of obstacles finding child care, getting time off work, paying for the procedure, transportation.

On Thursday BGSU Student Democrats and the community group Persist rallied to get supporters of legalized abortion to take another kind of action voting.

The rally began with Servidios refresher on where things stand in Ohio.

She noted to start that everyone in the room likely has had an abortion or loves someone who has had one.

Abortion is a real medical procedure, a real aspect of reproductive care that people seek every day, she said. Banning it would have real consequences for women facing a range of health issues, includingectopic pregnancies.

Rallies like the one at BGSU are necessary, she said.

Its important, she said, to have conversations about abortion, and reproduction health and what its like to live in a state like Ohio underneath the foot of the legislature that we currently have.

BG City Councilman Nick Rubando said that he is trying to ease some of the burdens by amending the citys human rights ordinance to help protect womens reproductive rights. If the resolution, which he plans to introduce in October, passes, for example, a woman would not have to worry about getting fired for taking time off to get an abortion.

After the educational session, about 150 people gathered outside the Bowen Thompson Student Union for a rally and a brief march through campus.

Jan Materni, candidate for State representative in District 3, said that women make up 51 percent of the electorate and now is the time for their voices to be heard.

Emily Gerome, the vice president of the BGSU Democrats, urged students to register to vote in Bowling Green, and encouraged those registered to help get other students sign up to vote.

The 150 participants stepped off heading toward Jerome Library chanting abortion is a right, we wont give up the fight.

Nearby about 15 antiabortion demonstrators stood silently. The two groups did not interact. That was by design.

Servidio cautioned those rallying note to engage with people just trying to bait them, and to disengage if they felt uncomfortable.

Allison Stump, Students for Life coordinator for Catholic Charities, said the counter protestors were there as peaceful, joyful witnesses to what it mean to be pro-life.

They were not there to engage in conversations. They have those in other settings.

When asked about the slogan bans off our bodies, she said, there are two bodies involved, and each body has a unique dignity as human beings.

She claimed: We understand from basic biology that the preborn are humans, and they deserve equal protection under the law.

Servidio warned that the forthcoming lame duck legislative session could be toxic, and vote to grant personhood to a fertilized egg.

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Rally at BGSU urges action to preserve reproductive rights BG Independent News - BG Independent News

This photograph, taken on February 24, 2014 during an aerial survey mission by Greenpeace in Indonesia, shows cleared trees in a forest located in the concession of Karya Makmur Abadi, which was being developed for a palm oil plantation. Environmental group Greenpeace on February 26 accused US consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble of aiding the destruction of Indonesian rainforests. BAY ISMOYO/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

This photograph, taken on February 24, 2014 during an aerial survey mission by Greenpeace in Indonesia, shows cleared trees in a forest located in the concession of Karya Makmur Abadi, which was being developed for a palm oil plantation. Environmental group Greenpeace on February 26 accused US consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble of aiding the destruction of Indonesian rainforests.

Cases of monkeypox are on the rise in the U.S., with about 67,600 global cases, including about 25,500 in the U.S. Simultaneously, the world is still facing a COVID-19 pandemic, despite the number of cases tapering off.

Researchers say these types of viruses, known as zoonotic diseases, or ones that spread between humans and animals, will become increasingly commonplace as factors such as the destruction of animal habitats and human expansion into previously uninhabited areas intensify.

Monkeypox was first found in monkeys in 1958 and in humans in 1970, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Elements such as deforestation, population growth and animal breeding have removed the boundaries between where humans and wild animals live, bringing them into closer contact.

Since 1990, about 1 billion acres of forest have been cut own to make room for other uses. Deforestation rates have been decreasing, with an average of 25 million acres being cleared each year from 2015 to 2020, down from about 40 million per year in the 1990s, according to a United Nations report.

Besides the impact on the climate, deforestation means a loss of habitat that often ends up driving wildlife nearer to people.

"You're just seeing the effects of the change in the environment, the change in animal behavior, the change in human behavior, bringing wild animals and humans more into contact where they can have more contamination," said Lanre Williams-Ayedun, the senior vice president of international programs at World Relief, a sustainability nonprofit organization.

Those changing patterns in animal migration and reproduction can influence how pathogens behave in their natural host, possibly becoming more contagious in the process, said Dr. Carl Fichtenbaum, the vice chairperson for clinical research for internal medicine at the University of Cincinnati.

"Depending on the particular germ, when it has an opportunity to do this multiple times, the germ adapts to the new species," he said.

A United Nations study found an estimated 60% of known infectious diseases found in humans and 75% of all emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, or transmitted between species, from animals to humans.

Some of those include Ebola, Zika and COVID-19, which scientists hypothesize started in bats.

Monkeypox is endemic, or regularly found, in some African countries. But because monkeypox can be "self-limiting" and not as transmissible as other viruses. "It wasn't something that you would have thought would become such a big outbreak," Williams-Ayedun said.

The virus was nearly eradicated at one point when people in those regions received vaccines for smallpox, a relative of monkeypox, in larger numbers. But now, vaccine rates are much lower in people 40 and younger, Williams-Ayedun said.

People are also traveling farther and more frequently these days.

"It's easy to spread diseases globally, and we've seen that something that happens in what we think is a remote part of the world somewhere can very easily become something that is a concern where we live," she said.

Luis Escobar, an assistant professor in Virginia Tech's fish and wildlife department, said that while researchers have been able to predict where small outbreaks of monkeypox are more likely to occur poorer regions, areas with war or social conflict or remote places it is in those places where data is less accessible.

"My perception is that the data may not be enough," he said. "The data may have not been enough to anticipate a global epidemic of this magnitude."

He added that scientists must survey zoonotic diseases "in all corners of the world because we don't know which [region] is going to trigger the next pandemic."

Fichtenbaum agrees, and said that with the thousands of germs in the ecosphere, it's hard to know which ones will spread to pandemic-level proportions.

"I think it would be really disingenuous if someone says, 'Well, I can predict that this germ is going to be the next big germ,'" he said. "I think we're not very good at that, in the same way that we're not very good at predicting earthquakes."

Escobar said that in looking to the future, researchers have neglected past data in their work to combat disease spread.

"The research I do is a bit to anticipate the future," he said. "But we're putting a lot of effort to try to reconstruct the past. We're analyzing data from the last century in terms of wildlife diseases, climate, forest laws in the last 100 years and with that, we are understanding what is happening now."

He and his colleagues have used that data in simulations to predict patterns in the next 50 to 100 years. But zoonotic diseases may not need that long.

Escobar's research suggests in the next 12 to 20 years, there could be a significant increase in diseases spread to humans from bats. Diseases endemic to Latin America's bat population could begin making their way to the American South as Latin America gets warmer, he said, which affects the distribution of and quantity of bats.

Additionally, diseases that are only exclusive to animals could tell us a lot about what society might look like down the line.

For example, as global warming continues to intensify, a virus common among fish could decimate aquaculture, causing blows to food production and the economy, Escobar said.

Fichtenbaum says public policy will need to address the spread of zoonotic diseases.

"I think right now, much of the climate change focus has been focused on, 'Well, this is bad for the environment, and we're going to see floods, and we're going to see heat waves, and this may affect economic survival.' But people aren't always looking at it in terms of health and human disease, which is very costly."

In recent years, some researchers in the zoonoses field of study have been pushing toward a "one health" approach, the merging of public health, veterinary health and environmental health, Ayedun-Wliliams said.

Helping people secure jobs, safe shelter and food is also important, as scarcity can result in hunting wild animals or cutting down trees for homes, and in turn, drive zoonotic diseases, she said.

Link:
Climate change is linked to the spread of viruses like monkeypox, experts say - NPR

As we near the midterm elections many are asking how will the Supreme Courts decision on abortion influence how people vote? With a host of other issues like inflation, student loans, the war in Ukraine, immigration, the presidents age, and the pandemic competing for the attention of voters, just how important is the issue of abortion?

Very.

The reason is that in politics, intensity matters. Unlike every other issue pollsters ask about, abortion and the broader questions it raises about reproductive health are central to the existence of 51.1% of the population in a way that no other issue in politics is or has ever been.

From the time a young woman menstruates to the time she is done with the last symptom of menopause and beyond, women are in constant conversation with other women about the everyday reality of their reproductive organs.

For many women these discussions eventually revolve around pregnancy, and for a subset of the female population, there is an additional struggle and trauma associated with getting pregnant in the first place. The intensity of pregnancy is usually the first time in this saga that men become aware of the realities of reproduction as they learn about the dangers and problems their partners could face. For most of human history, pregnancy has been dangerous and often fatal. Women with uteri can experience ectopic pregnancies, preeclampsia, and placental complications. After these health risks comes the trauma of delivery and the possibility of fetal distress, perinatal asphyxia, placenta previa, and host of other complications that can still be fatal even with modern medicine. Most men have never heard of these complications until their wife or partner is pregnant. And after the pregnancy, men rarely talk about these issues again and they recede into the background.

This is no criticism of men, they dont live the reproductive cycle so of course they dont pay much attention to it. But it does make them less acutely aware of the enormous dangers women face when the government starts telling doctors what they can and cannot do to pregnant women. There are some things the government is simply NOT good at and dictating individual medical outcomes is near the top of the list.

So, we now face an election where that is exactly what is on the ballot. Everyone born with a uterus has an interest and a stake in the abortion issue that those without a uterus do not havemeaning, the abortion issue will be intense for a lot of people. In addition to the intensity of this issue is the sheer number of females in the population and the electorate. First, there are more women than men in America167,500,000 women compared to 164,380,000 men.

But more importantly, women vote more often than menin the 2020 presidential election, women constituted 52% of the electorate compared to 48% for men.

Small shifts in this vote yield big numbers. Take, for instance, the swing state of Pennsylvania. It, like many states in 2020, had record high turnout of 6,924,558. According to exit polls, 52% of those voters were women or 3,600,827. A shift of only 3% of the womens votes would be equal to 108,025 votes or 27,470 more than Bidens close victory over Trump.

No wonder Republican candidates are trying to soften their abortion stances. As men get a crash course in reproductive biology, more and more will have the experience that South Carolina State Rep. Neal Collins had when he regretted voting for an anti-abortion law that put a young womens life at risk and the near loss of uterus when her water broke just after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Collins went on to vote for a less radical billone that listed 12 to 14 situations where the life of the mother would be protected. But what if there are more situations that threaten the life of the mother than the South Carolina legislature knows about? Women know that ultimately these decisions must be made between themselves and their doctors (and the men in their lives know that too). Nothing else will work, which is why the abortion issue is unlike anything else we have seen in politics.

See more here:
The abortion issue in the 2022 midtermsunlike any other issue - Brookings Institution

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dr. Al Yuzpe, Chief Medical Officer for The Fertility Partners and a pioneer in reproductive medicine, was awarded The Lifetime Achievement Award at the 68th Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society (CFAS) Annual Meeting.

The Lifetime Achievement Award is a special recognition of an individual for extraordinary commitment and proven long-term contributions to the nonprofit CFAS and the field of reproductive science.

Referred to as the grandfather of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in Canada, Dr. Yuzpe introduced new treatments, technologies, and procedures that revolutionized the field of fertility medicine in North America and worldwide.

We have always held tremendous respect for Dr. Yuzpes decades of experience and tireless commitment to improving fertility medicine, said Dr. Andrew Meikle, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Fertility Partners (TFP). The Lifetime Achievement Award from the CFAS is a great honor and well deserved. I know the entire TFP network is beyond proud to consider him part of the team.

Dr. Yuzpes research on hormones in the 1960s led to the development of clomiphene citrate and human menopausal gonadotropins and greater clinical understanding of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), some of the most commonly used drugs in fertility medicine today. In 1971 his work led to the development of an emergency contraceptive method using regularly available birth control pills, also referred to as the Yuzpe method.

Dr. Yuzpe was among the first physicians to bring laparoscopic surgery for infertility to North America after learning the technique from his Canadian colleague Dr. Jacques Rioux. In 1982 he founded one of the first IVF centers in Canada at the University of Western Ontario and brought to Canada the procedure of IVF developed by peers Dr. Robert Steptoe and Dr. Patrick Edwards, the U.K. physicians responsible for the worlds first IVF birth in 1978.

Dr. Yuzpe has consulted and advised IVF and infertility treatment physicians all over the world, and continues to advance the field of fertility medicine through his role with The Fertility Partners and as the co-founder and co-director of Olive Fertility Center in Vancouver.

Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to develop a strong relationship with Dr. Al Yuzpe, said CFAS Executive Director Dr. Goldi Gill. Reflective of his knowledgeable and humble character, he is always willing to lend a helping hand to both me and the CFAS, an organization he has been an integral part of for so many years. I am thrilled that he is receiving this prestigious award, as it demonstrates his dedication to the CFAS, as well as the greater field of assisted reproductive technology (ART).

The CFAS is a multidisciplinary national non-profit Society that serves as the voice of reproductive specialists, scientists, and allied health professionals working in the field of Assisted Reproduction in Canada. Dr. Yuzpe, a former CFAS President, remains an active member of the society.

When I first began my career in obstetrics and gynecology in the 1970s, we didnt have very much to offer those who suffered from infertility, said Dr. Yuzpe. Now there is so much we can do. I feel fortunate to have worked with so many great minds over the years and to have been a part of the growth of fertility medicine. Thank you CFAS for the honor. Together, we have achieved great things.

Dr. Yuzpes contributions to education, research, and innovation greatly advanced fertility treatments that have helped patients worldwide build families. Today, more than eight million babies have been born from IVF.

Read more about Dr. Yuzpes contributions here.

About The Fertility Partners

The Fertility Partners is the business partner of choice for distinguished fertility practices across North America. With a network that includes 13 IVF centers across 36 locations in the U.S. and Canada, the Fertility Partners empowers leading fertility practices to achieve unparalleled patient experiences and outcomes through collaboration, strategic expertise and investment in people, process and technology.

For more information, please visit: http://www.thefertilitypartners.com.

See the rest here:
Pioneer in the Field of Reproductive Medicine Recognized - Business Wire

Mothers who stay at home have questioned why the Government is recognising their work by giving a tax credit to their spouses.

inance Minister Paschal Donohoe announced he was increasing the Home Carer Tax Credit by 100, to support stay-at-home parents.

The tax credit, previously worth 1,600, is available to couples who are married or in a civil partnership, where one of them is a full time carer.

The tax credit is applied to the earnings of the working partner.

So theyre going to recognise my work, by paying it to my spouse? said Ails N Chofaigh, a mother-of-one.

She said it was offensive that the Government was failing to value the work done by stay at home parents the vast majority of whom are women.

Its not income into my bank account, its not pay and its not recognition.

"Its a little bit insulting, to be honest. Is that what my work is valued at? A 100 tax credit, over the course of a year? Are you kidding me?

Ms N Chofaigh, who is based in Limerick and whose son is four-and-a-half, said it was offensive that the Government did not value the work of parents who cared for children at home.

In contrast it did appear to recognise the value of childcare outside of the home through its reduction in crche fees.

Stay-at-home parents work, we work hard. We just arent paid. We arent valued and we arent represented. And theres no way that isnt influenced by the fact that 98pcof stay-at-home parents in Ireland are women, she said.

What activist groups are there for us?

"What feminist groups?

Pauline OReilly, the Green Party senator and founder of Stay at Home Parents Ireland, said that there had been amazing supports for childcare costs announced in the Budget but she believed more needed to be done for stay-at-home parents.

The Governments plan to cut creche fees was hailed as a breakthrough for womens equality by the National Womens Council of Ireland, which said a lack of affordable childcare is the single biggest barrier to womens equality in the workplace.

Meanwhile, One Family, which represents single-parent families, saidthe increase of 12 for core social welfare paymentand a 2 additional payment for children will do nothing to mitigate against poverty in 2023.

A number of measures in Budget 2023 were aimed at easing the rising cost of living for women and families.

For the first time, IVF will be available on the public health service after funding was announced for the fertility treatmentwhich is currently only available through unregulated clinics, at significant expense.

The treatment will be available to couples who are finding it hard to conceive after a landmark assisted human reproduction bill makes its way through the Oireachtas.

The Government said that funding will be made available next year for a dedicated womens health package.

The recently launched free contraception scheme has also been extended from its original age limit of 17-25 to 16-30.

Free contraception for all women was first promised over four years ago. Hormone replacement therapy will now be subject to zero per cent Vat, as will mooncups, menstrual sponges and period pants. Products like tampons and sanitary pads were already subject to zero per cent Vat.

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Budget 2023: Stay-at-home mother blasts 'insulting' home carer credit rise - 'So they're going to recognise my work, by paying it to my spouse?' -...