The fertilization and development of one or more offspring, known as an embryo or fetus, in a woman's uterus.
Questions tagged [pregnancy]
51 questions
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Do victims of rape have biological defenses that prevent pregnancy?
Pro life Rep. Todd Akin, who was running for Senate in Missouri, said:
“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
Needless to say, this claim is quite controversial. Is there any truth to it?
samthebrand
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Are 42% of human deaths worldwide from abortion?
Lately, social media has been flooded with all sorts of "facts" about abortion. This one in particular caught my attention:
42% of yearly deaths in the world are from abortion
A worldwide crisis
I don't want this to degrade into an argument about…
Coomie
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During pregnancy, do babies send stem cells to their mothers to repair organ damage?
This picture is floating around the facebooks with no attribution to an original source (not even a source of the image):
The image says:
During pregnancy, if a mother suffers organ damage, the baby in the womb sends stem cells to repair the…
IQAndreas
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Does the oral contraceptive pill "age" a woman's cervix prematurely?
Well, I heard an interesting one tonight. My wife passed on that on a blog discussing contraceptive use, someone posted a link to a site stating that taking Ortho Tri Cyclen, an oral contraceptive, "ages" the cervix prematurely.
The implication was…
Hendy
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Are some species of animals born pregnant?
I've heard of claims that aphids can be born pregnant, like tribbles in ''Star Trek''.
However, doing a web search didn't provide very convincing evidence.
The Straight Dope refers to being pregnant before birth as paedogenesis. The Wikipedia…
Andrew Grimm
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Do the Huichol of Mexico tie rope around the father's testicles during birth?
Gathered from the Internet:
Members of the Huichol tribe in Mexico view childbirth as a time of great pain and pleasure that must be shared by both men and women.At the time of childbirth, the fathers balls are tied and the mother can pull…
Avery
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Is it possible to influence the sex of a baby by controlling the mothers' diet?
Can a mother decide whether a baby will be born male or female through careful control of her diet?
blueberryfields
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17
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Is any amount of alcohol during pregnancy safe?
Doctors seem to always say a woman shouldn't drink at all during pregnancy. But then I have heard a midwife say "it would take a lot of constant drinking to cause fetal alcohol syndrome; you'd be fine with a glass of wine once in a while."
It would…
Taj Moore
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Can you determine the gender of a baby by the shape of the mother's belly?
This is a very common saying that people make about soon-to-be mothers. But is it really true? Can you tell what the gender of a baby will be based on how the mother's belly is shaped?
Article that explains the belly test.
Programmer
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Can pregnancy tests check for testicular cancer in men?
I saw this picture here:
[
Is this true? Can cancer be detected by a pregnancy test?
ike
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Does a fetus feel pain during abortion in gestation week 12-18?
One of the sources of the claim:
http://www.blogicus.com/archives/babies_feel_pain_during_abortions.php
The fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks. This is probably a conservatively late estimate, but it is scientifically solid. Elements of the…
dot
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Shouldn't tell about pregnancy in first trimester
We have another baby on the way and I was thinking about asking this previously, but wasn't sure how common it was as our first child predates this site by about 4 years.
Now we have another on the way it has come up again and people keep telling us…
going
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Does Texas have the worst maternal mortality in the developed world?
A 2016 article in the Guardian claims that Texas has seen a doubling in the maternal mortality rate after the closure of 80 family planning centres giving obstetric and gynaecology advice to pregnant women. In the words of the article:
The rate of…
matt_black
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Did an American woman give birth to 17 babies at once?
World News Daily Report claims:
An American woman has totally annihilated the former World Record for the most babies in a lone pregnancy by giving birth to seventeen babies over 29 hours last weekend at the Indianapolis Memorial Hospital.
Other…
Rebecca J. Stones
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Does eating papaya everyday work as a contraceptive?
I saw a few hours ago a friend posted on his Facebook wall a claim that some research from the University of Sussex has shown that daily consumption of ripe papaya works as a contraceptive, and to reverse the effects all you have to do is stop…
Andy
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