Infertility

A 2004 report also states that the rates of women with chlamydia in North Carolina are higher than the rates of the nation as a whole.

Gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis are all treatable with antibiotics.

If left untreated, they can lead to more serious infections, such as pelvic inflammatory disease.

Herpes is another common STD at the university.

There are two types of herpes viruses: simplex, which appears as cold sores, and genitalus which appear in the genital area.

These two types of herpes can be interchanged through oral sex.

Herpes causes uncomfortable sores, which can lead to sickness and fever if there are many sores at once.

There is a treatment for herpes which modifies the course of the disease but does not get rid of it.

Herpes is not a very dangerous disease, but it is uncomfortable and highly infectious when there are lesions, Stuart said.

The only time the disease is dangerous is a first-time infection during the third trimester of pregnancy because it can spread to the baby.

According to ASHA, as many as one in four Americans have genital herpes, but as many as 90 percent are unaware of it.

The human immunodeficiency, or HIV, virus, one of the most commonly talked abo...

Kate Meiners, D-Kansas City.The other alternative is for low-income women to give birth to more children, which is only likely to drive up the state's costs to provide services to them, said Democratic Rep.

Melba Curls, also of Kansas City.The family planning program that was canceled in 2003 had provided state grants for women's health care services.

Anti-abortion lawmakers had battled in court for years to try to prevent that money from going to Planned Parenthood, which also provides abortions.This year's provision, inserted by Rep.

Margaret Donnelly, D-St.

Louis, would have avoided the Planned Parenthood controversy by only providing contraception through public health clinics.

It primarily would have affected women who lack private insurance but who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, which provides contraception under federal rules.Donnelly said it was a first step to restoring the services of the deleted program."The average Missourian...

One in every eight couples is unable to conceive children by natural means.

Other potential clients are gay couples who want children.

The baby industry, Spar notes, expanded beneath the radar of most business analysts.

This is, she says, partly because clients generally recoil from the notion that their families are - at least in part - the result of "market activity." In addition, there has been little call for governmental regulation of this new and unique business.

The development of the baby industry took off, says Spar, in 1978 with the birth of Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby.

Today desperate couples go through round after round of in vitro fertilization (IVF) at an average cost of $12,400 per try, even though the success rate hovers around 27 percent and drops as low as 9 percent if the woman is over 40.

Those who do give up can turn to adoption, along with about 120,000 other U.S.

families each year, paying out up to $35,000 per child.

A few countries have recently passed laws that constrain the use of reproductive technologies.

Italy passed legislation that prohibits sterile, gay, or single adults from using donor eggs or surrogate mothers.

In Germany, egg transfer of any sort is illegal, as are surrogacy and treatments that involve manipulating the human embryo.

The United States maintains a controversial ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

B...