The Federal government has approved the first prescription device to treat female sexual dysfunction - Eros-CTD (clitoral therapy device), which improves blood flow to the genitalia. The Food and Drug Administration has given marketing clearance to UroMetrics, a Minnesota company, for the device. UroMetrics says Eros "safely and non-invasively provides gentle suction directly to the clitoris, causing engorgement" to treat the condition, which is reported to affect about 43 percent of American women (40 million, approximately). Eros "improves sensation, lubrication, orgasm and overall satisfaction," a company statement continues. Eros will also be marketed in Australia, France, and Britain.
CAIRO - Four husbands can't travel out of Egypt under court order - granted at their wives' request. It's the first order of its kind under a new Egyptian personal status law, which took effect March 1 and gives family courts power to grant women divorce within months if they waive alimony and return monetary bridal gifts under Islamic khula precept. Under the current court order, the four husbands must pay alimony or be prevented from traveling abroad - or face a year in jail if they refuse to pony up. Previously, only husbands could stop their wives from getting passports and traveling abroad. But there's one small problem - all four work outside Egypt, which means the ban on their traveling abroad, Reuters said, would be enforced only if they re-enter Egypt.
MARICOPA, Az. - Claiming her doctors should have determined her pregnancy well enough before he did, a woman is suing them. Ruth Ann Burns says that even though she loves her two year old son, Nicholas, she would have had an abortion if she could have - but she claims her doctors failed to detect her pregnancy in time for her to have a legal abortion in Arizona. Not so, retort the doctors. They argue she had plenty of time to obtain an abortion but chose not to do so, even with the comparatively late pregnancy detection. They also claim Burns knew only too well how to go about it, since she had had three previous abortions. Burns's attorney claims the baby prevents her from pursuing career goals and becoming self-sufficient for the first time, adding her constitutional rights were taken from her. But the defense argues the doctors acted "reasonably" between March and June 1997, when her pregnancy was detected at last, after time trying to determine the source of abdominal pains and breast swelling which followed at least one negative pregnancy test. The doctors also maintain that, when she discovered her pregnancy - thanks to an ultrasound technician who determined it was almost 17 weeks along - she didn't try to find out the age of the baby but went on vacation instead. Burns had been having unprotected sex using the contraceptive Depo Provera. She may also have contacted several abortion clinics while on vacation who turned her down without proper information on her pregnancy's timeframe.
--- Compiled by Humphrey Pennyworth
