Women who take the birth control pill are more likely to live longer than women who have never taken the pill, according to a study published Friday in the British medical journal BMJ, the AP/Boston Globe reports. Researchers in the United Kingdom followed more than 46,000 women who took the pill and then compared the mortality rate of those women with women who did not take birth control pills...

The following summarizes selected women's health-related blog entries. ~ "Healthcare Reform Bill Abortion Debate is Nonsensical," Robert Schlesinger, U.S...

Providing emergency contraception to women in advance of need does not reduce pregnancy rates, despite increased use and faster use after unprotected sexual intercourse. These are the findings according to a new review published in The Cochrane Library. Women who take emergency contraception up to five days after unprotected sex are less likely to become pregnant...

NPR's "All Things Considered" on Friday examined a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis showing that roughly 16% of U.S. residents ages 14 through 49 are infected with genital herpes, making it one of the nation's most common sexually transmitted infections...

Although the recently released "Hotshot" condom in Switzerland "has already launched a thousand jokes," the condom designed specifically for sexually active boys ages 12 to 14 "could become part of the sex-education toolbox," Washington Times columnist Cheryl Wetzstein writes...

An Indiana University School of Medicine study provides a better understanding of why sexually experienced girls resume sexual activity after periods of abstinence, information key to dealing with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and pregnancy in high school girls and beyond...

After struggling for decades "to win support from the scientific community," contraceptive researchers have "re-established themselves as dedicated to a deserving craft with impressive developments that redefine conventional birth control," according to a Slate opinion piece by Jennifer Austin, a medical school graduate who is beginning an obstetrics and gynecology residency this summer...

Discrimination Against Sexual Orientation Are 'Backward Steps' For Human Rights In Africa In a Washington Post opinion piece, Desmond Tutu, archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, speaks out against efforts to deny individuals "their fundamental rights and freedoms" based on their sexual orientation...

The American Academy of Neurology has issued a new guideline recommending the most effective treatments to help people with Parkinson's disease who experience sleep, constipation, and sexual problems, which are common but often underrecognized symptoms. The guideline is published in the March 16, 2010, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology...

Sexual addiction, also called sexual dependency, hypersexuality, nymphomania, compulsive sexual behavior and sexual compulsivity, refers to the phenomenon in which individuals report being unable to manage their sexual behavior...

NPR's "Morning Edition" examined evangelical Christian health groups that share the cost of medical bills among members instead of purchasing traditional health insurance plans, many of which cover services that go against evangelical beliefs...

Sexual problems are frequent after operations for carcinoma of the rectum. Christian Schmidt et al. describe the consequences for quality of life in the current issue of Deutsches Arzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2010; 107[8]: 123-30). In Germany, each year more than 70,000 people develop colorectal carcinoma...

3500 20- to 24-year-old women from Tromsø and Hamar in Norway were offered free hormonal contraception for a year. The result was that the abortion rate in the trial cities was halved...

Women's health experts are watching closely to see whether a recent grant to provide no-cost female condoms in Washington, D.C., will "really make a difference" in the area's HIV/AIDS rate among women, Newsweek's Kate Dailey writes. The goal of the program is to empower women to take control of their own health and safety...

Alaska health officials have reported that the state's gonorrhea rates increased by 69% in 2009 after remaining steady for years, the Anchorage Daily News reports. Susan Jones of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services said the increase is the biggest one-year jump since the 1970s...

In the "three years since the Supreme Court's conservative majority abruptly departed from precedent to uphold a federal ban on a particular method of abortion, ... foes of reproductive freedom are pressing new attacks on women's rights and health," a New York Times editorial states. Utah Gov...

Roughly 16% of U.S. residents ages 14 through 49 are infected with genital herpes, making it one of the nation's most common sexually transmitted infections, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis released on Tuesday, Reuters reports. CDC noted that infection rates for the lifelong and incurable infection varied by gender and race. Twenty-one percent of U.S...

According to the Journal of Sexual Medicine, people who engage in regular sexual activity gain several health benefits, such as longer lives, healthier hearts, lower blood pressure, and lower risk of breast cancer. However, approximately 33 percent of women may not receive these benefits due to low sexual desire...

"A new study suggests that what people mean when they say they've had sex -- or haven't -- depends on whom you ask," St. Petersburg Times columnist Colette Bancroft writes in an opinion piece about new research from the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction and the Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention...

Men who engaged in domestic violence consistently overestimated how common such behavior is, and the more they overestimated it the more they engaged in abusing their partner in the previous 90 days, according to new research conducted at the University of Washington...