Beth Kohl

Sometimes life's sweetest things take the longest to achieve. For me, becoming a mother involved years of clinical help and round after round of in vitro fertilization. Yesterday, at the age of 85 and 32 years after the birth of Louise Brown, the first test tube baby, Dr. Robert Edwards,...

Despite new guidelines issued by the National Institutes of Health, few researchers are keen on creating new stem cell lines due both to the expense and the continuing ban on spending federal dollars to do so. It can cost millions simply to derive the lines. Factor in the cost...

I've been holding my tongue and itchy-to-blog fingers, trying not to comment on the mother from whose body eight tiny beings were plucked last week, until I'd had the chance to hear her story and get some details. The only fact I could reasonably infer about Nadya Suleman, octuplet mom,...

Last night, I, too, was at the Obama Election Night Rally in Grant Park. I was one of tens of thousands who physically made it into the park. In fact, I managed to make it onto a tiny patch of grass forty or so feet in front of the podium....

About eight years ago, my mom's sister Linda discovered she had breast cancer. It progressed quickly and she died. And then a couple of months ago, my mom's other sister, Joanie, found out that she too had breast cancer. After briefly consoling my mom, I started in on an interrogation....

On the campus of Sarder Patel University in Anand, India, there is a house where dozens of pregnant women dwell. Located on a quiet side street, the house is large and well-maintained and has a red and white mosaic of Ganesha, the Elephant God, adorning much of the upper level...

If you happen to be a Coloradan planning to vote in November 2008, prepare yourself not only to select a presidential candidate, but also to consider an issue that concerns even more ill-defined beings. Perhaps you aren't quite sure what sort of people the presidential candidates are, are not convinced...

Hey Ladies! Great news. That monthly, underpant-wrecking mess that you currently curse for ruining your positive outlook and/or semi-flat belly and/or oral sex capacity? It isn't one hundred percent bad! Not only does it mean that your body is working like it is supposed to and capable of bringing forth...

Most fertility center websites have some things in common. Regardless of where the clinic is located, no matter the city, state or country, usually there are photos of tantalizingly adorable newborns, a list of FAQs, and Excel spread sheets graphing success rates. The Akanksha Infertility Clinic isn't much different,...

A couple of weeks ago, the British government gave tentative approval to Britain's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to review scientific licenses to create "cybrids," or hybridized human-animal embryos, for stem cell research. Cybrids, also known as cytoplastic hybrids, are created by injecting a human nucleus into an animal...

A couple of weeks ago, I published a memoir that I'd been working on for years. I'd written draft after draft, making conscious decisions about what to include. So you'd think I'd be comfortable having people read it. You'd think I'd be urging everybody, every single one of you, to...

Almost exactly nine months ago, my editor called to urge me not to get pregnant. It's not that I'm reproductively profligate, nor had I asked for her advice. Rather, she'd read through the manuscript I'd just sent, realized that I was most likely leaning towards using some of the seven...

When I imagine sperm, something I've done quite enough to have a firm, mental picture, I see a million of them barreling toward their end, whether egg, dish or drain. In my mind's eye, there's nothing fragile about them, nothing too nuanced or distinct, just some bulbous heads and whipping...

Earlier this month in southern India, a two-day-old baby girl was discovered alive in a grave. Turns out, her grandfather had buried her to avoid paying to raise an unwanted female child. And while prenatal sex determination tests are illegal in India, some studies estimate that around 10 million girls...

A study published in this week's online edition of the journal Science finds that a majority of couples (62 percent) with stored embryos from fertility treatments say they'd be willing to donate their surplus for stem cell research. The very people with heavy emotional and financial investments in these embryos,...

I would love to work as the person who thinks up names for products having to do with our sexual organs and reproductive systems. How fun to actually market remedies for these most hidden, mysterious and powerful of bodily structures. How satisfied I would have been to be the one...

I asked a friend, an unmarried, childless guy in his early thirties, what he thought about the 60 year-old New Jersey woman who had twins a couple of weeks ago. He paused, mumbled, gathering his thoughts. "You probably want me to laud the science that makes this possible," he said,...

Pregnancy, despite its ubiquity and the fact people have been doing it since there have been people, is complicated. Achieving it can be a whopper for many, whether because they're infertile (like I was, ultimately relying on IVF to fulfill my desire to be a mom) or in a same-sex...