A tweet in response to our story on the choice to go childless.

To decrease the birth rate would require a big decrease in sexual activity. Here are the numbers: Researchers followed 881 couples through 7,017 menstrual cycles, with two stipulations for the volunteers: sex just once per month and no birth control of any sort. They found that on days outside the fertile window, conception occurred about 5 percent of the time, while during the fertile time around ovulation, the rate was 25 percent. Call the overall rate about 10 percent per unprotected intercourse. But protection with condoms or the pill or whatever brings the number way down—let’s say that rather than 10 percent, the rate with protection is 1 percent. That means to prevent one pregnancy an American would have to have sex 100 times less per year, just about a year’s worth of activity.

Are we having less sex? What’s behind the drop in the U.S. birth rate!?

The end of summer marks the end of “baby season” in the United States, the months when most American babies are born. While the season is a time of celebration for millions here at home, it is a time of great danger for women in the developing world, where maternal mortality rates are staggeringly high. The World Health Organization conservatively estimated that in 2010, 287,000 women died during pregnancy and childbirth around the world. What makes this figure more unfortunate is that most of these deaths are preventable.

New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg writes about a maternal health program his charitable organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies, is undertaking in Tanzania. 

Why do women steal babies? “The kidnapper desperately wants the baby, so she’s not looking to abuse the child but to love her. Most snatched babies are well cared for,” says Dr. Phillip Resnick, director of forensic psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Women like Ann Pettway, who was sentenced this week to 12 years in prison for kidnapping infant Carlina White 25 years ago, are simply blinded by narcissism—and a total lack of empathy.

Help Name Newsweek Deputy Managing Editor Paula Szuchman’s Baby!

Our Deputy Managing Editor Paula Szuchman is pregnant. Like, really pregnant! It’s time to name the baby (it’s a girl!). She’s open to suggestions, any really, and mentioned in the morning meeting she’d love it if you guys would help her out. So take a look at this here momma and try and think reeeeeally hard what this baby wants to be named. Send us your suggestion with a reblog, message, or tweet (use #NamePaulasBaby) and we’ll have some kind of vote early next week. OK, go!

Women who consume at least one daily serving of whole milk are more than 50 percent less likely to experience ovulatory infertility than are women who consume less than one serving of whole milk per week.

Got milk?

npr:

Many Women Underestimate Fertility Clock’s Clang

A new survey finds many women dramatically underestimate how much fertility declines with age.

Photo courtesy of Kate Donnellon Nail

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. “What’s the chance a 30-year-old can get pregnant in one try? Many thought up to 80 percent, while in reality it’s less than 30 percent. For a 40-year-old, many assumed up to a 40 percent success rate. It’s actually less than 10 percent.”

Christine O’Donnell [may have] crusaded against masturbation in the mid-1990s, denouncing it as “toying” with the organs of procreation and generally undermining baby making, [but[ the facts are to the contrary. Evidence from elephants to rodents to humans shows that masturbating is—counterintuitively—an excellent way to make healthy babies, and lots of them.

The always tasteful (even when talking about masturbation) Sharon Begley, on the scientific case for masturbation.