The San Francisco Board of Supervisors Tuesday gave initial approval to an ordinance that prohibits "crisis pregnancy centers" from making misleading statements about services that they offer. The ordinance, introduced by Supervisor Malia Cohen, was passed in a 10-1 vote by the board at this afternoon's meeting. Supervisor Sean Elsbernd was the lone dissenting vote. Cohen had joined City Attorney Dennis Herrera at a news conference in August about the three such "crisis pregnancy centers" ......

When it comes to the effects of smoking, the most delicate time for a child’s genetic development is before birth. A new study from the University of California, San Francisco, found that exposure to tobacco smoke in utero was far more likely to cause severe asthma than exposure during the first two years of life. Children with severe asthma were more than three times more likely to have been exposed to smoke ......

College-educated women are having children later than those with only a high school diploma, creating what the Census Bureau is calling a "delayer boom." In 2000, the census found found fewer than half of women women 25 to 34 with at least a bachelor's degree had given birth. By 2010, 76 percent of those same women, now ages 35 to 44, had given birth to at least one child. "Highly ......

The percentage of women dying in childbirth in California is increasing, according a report released Tuesday by the state's Department of Public Health.  And many of those deaths could have been prevented.  The rate of maternal deaths in the state in 1999 was 8.0 deaths per 100,000 live births. By 2008, it had risen to 14.0 deaths per 100,000 live births, "The California Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review" found. To take a ......

A new report from California Watch's Nathanael Johnson highlights a distressing trend in maternal health: more women are giving birth early, often for no medical reason. In the US, the average time spent in the womb has dropped by seven days since 1992, Johnson reports. Shorter pregnancies can affect babies' "lung development, vision, weight, and some fine-tuning of the brain." The dramatic increase in early births coincides with the rise ......