|
|
 |
|
|
villages/woman/ AP Headlines Update Page
|
SC gov 'crossed lines' with women |
|
|
Doctors say more ovary transplants possible |
|
|
NCAA may change women's gymnastics
championships |
|
|
|
|
 Professional Women's Village News
By The Associated Press
SC gov 'crossed lines' with women
By TAMARA LUSH and EVAN BERLAND
Associated Press Writers
COLUMBIA, S.C. - South Carolina Gov.
Mark Sanford said Tuesday that he "crossed lines'' with a handful of
women other than his mistress -- but never had sex with them.
The governor said he "never crossed
the ultimate line'' with anyone but Maria Belen Chapur, the Argentine at
the center of a scandal that has derailed his once-promising political
career.
"This was a whole lot more than a
simple affair, this was a love story,'' Sanford said. "A forbidden one,
a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day.''
During an emotional interview at his
Statehouse office with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Sanford said
Chapur is his soul mate but he's trying to fall back in love with his
wife.
He said that during the encounters
with other women he "let his guard down'' with some physical contact but
"didn't cross the sex line.'' He wouldn't go into detail.
Sanford said the casual encounters
happened outside the U.S. while he was married but before he met Chapur,
on trips to "blow off steam'' with male friends.
Sanford also admitted he saw Chapur
more times than previously disclosed, including what was to be a
farewell meeting in New York chaperoned by a spiritual adviser soon
after his wife found out about the affair.
He described five meetings with
Chapur over the past year, including two romantic, multi-night stays
with her in New York before they met there again intending to break up.
He said he saw her two other times,
including their first meeting in 2001 at an open-air dance spot in
Uruguay.
"There was some kind of connection
from the very beginning,'' he told The Associated Press, though he said
neither that meeting nor a 2004 coffee date in New York during the
Republican National Convention were romantic.
His interview was the first
disclosure of any liaisons with Chapur in the United States and
contradicted a public confession last week during which he admitted to a
total of five encounters over their eight-year relationship.
He previously announced he would
reimburse the state for money spent during a government trip to Brazil
and Argentina in June 2008 when he saw Chapur. It was then, he said,
that their relationship became physical, and the e-mails they'd
exchanged for years reflected their anguish over what they had done.
"Now I am frightened,'' he told the
AP, describing his state of mind at the time. "It was before safe. But
now it's not safe. We gotta put the genie back in the bottle.''
He insists no public money was used
for any other meetings with her.
He saw Chapur again in mid-June of
this year, visiting Argentina without telling his staff he was going to
be out of the country. He instead led them to believe he was hiking on
the Appalachian Trail.
By the time he returned to a puzzled
public, staff and family, his public image and emotional state had
unraveled. He admitted the affair at a rambling press conference.
Now Sanford is attempting to salvage
his personal and professional lives. He and wife Jenny, parents of four
sons, say they are trying to reconcile their 20-year marriage but have
not been sharing the same house for several weeks. Jenny Sanford found
out about the relationship in January when she discovered a letter the
governor had written to his mistress. She did not immediately return a
message seeking comment Tuesday.
The governor said he met Chapur in
Punta Del Este, Uruguay, in 2001 after his final term in Congress and
before his first term as governor. He said the two struck up an e-mail
correspondence after meeting on a dance floor -- a chance encounter
during which he counseled her into the night about her failing marriage.
For the next seven-plus years,
Sanford said, the two exchanged messages, sometimes sporadically.
They met in New York two more times
in 2008: two nights in Manhattan in September and three nights in the
Hamptons in November. Each time, Sanford claims he flew coach, paid for
it himself, paid for the hotels in cash and told his staff he was
reachable via cell phone.
"At that point I was very careful,
everything was paid for in cash,'' Sanford said. "And you won't find a
credit card record.''
In early 2009, after Jenny Sanford
discovered the affair, the couple went into counseling. She has told The
Associated Press that he asked her several times to visit the mistress
and she refused.
But the governor claims he wanted to
end the affair in person and, with his wife's permission, went to New
York with a "trusted spiritual adviser'' serving as chaperone. The three
went to church and dinner together and parted ways the same night.
But he visited Chapur again in
Argentina on June 18, the trip that brought the whole affair to light.
Doctors say more ovary transplants possible
By MARIA CHENG
AP Medical Writer
LONDON (AP) - Two new techniques to
preserve and transplant ovaries might give women a better chance to
fight their biological clocks and have children when they are older,
doctors announced Monday.
In the past, scientists have
performed ovarian transplants in women with cancer, since chemotherapy
often causes infertility. Doctors typically take out patients' ovaries
before the toxic treatment begins and then reimplant them later.
Because of the cost and uncertainties
involved -- only a handful have been done successfully -- this was
thought only worthwhile for women with serious diseases who had few
options.
Now, recent advances to preserve
ovaries and surgically implant them could make the procedure more widely
available, helping women avoid fertility problems as they age. Many
women are now delaying having a family until their 30s or 40s, when
fertility problems become more common.
Women in their 20s or 30s could
theoretically have an ovary removed and frozen, and then have it
reimplanted years later when they are ready to have children.
"We are in the middle of an
infertility epidemic,'' said Dr. Sherman Silber, director of the St.
Louis Infertility Center in Missouri, one of the experts behind the
research. "With these new techniques, we could dramatically expand our
reproductive lifespan.''
The research was reported at a
meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in
Amsterdam.
Silber and colleagues studied how
many eggs were lost or preserved in fresh and frozen ovarian tissue of
15 young women before they had cancer treatment. The doctors found no
difference in the number of eggs in fresh tissue and in ovaries frozen
using a new ultra-fast technique.
Using the traditional, slow-freezing
methods of preserving ovaries, about half of a woman's eggs were lost.
In related research, Dr. Pascal Piver
of Limoges University Hospital in France reported on a new surgical
technique to transplant ovaries.
Doctors have often found it difficult
to restore an ovary's function after transplantation, largely because it
takes time for the blood and hormone supply to be re-established.
Piver and colleagues attempted to
solve this problem by dividing the transplant into two procedures: an
initial graft of small pieces of ovarian tissue to encourage blood
vessels to grow put in place three days before the real transplant.
The technique was used in a French
woman who had been unable to have children because of treatment for
sickle cell anemia. In June, she gave birth to a baby girl.
"All of this research is a step in
the right direction,'' said Pasquale Patrizio, of Yale University, who
performs ovary transplants but was not connected to either study. "If we
really have these techniques under control, maybe we can spread this
technology to many more women.''
But Patrizio said doctors need to
know how an ovary taken from a woman years ago will perform once it is
put back in.
"If I take an ovary from a woman
who's 30 and then reimplant it 15 years later, will it function as if
it's a 30-year-old's ovarian tissue, or will it reset to become 45?'' he
asked.
Experts said the possibility of
healthy women being offered ovary transplants would likely spark
controversy.
"This is not an experimental
procedure for cancer patients anymore,'' Silber said. "The question is
whether more women should be able to have this option.''
On the Net:
www.eshre.com
NCAA may change women's gymnastics championships
By The Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - The NCAA women's
gymnastics committee is recommending changes to the national
championship format: It wants four teams to compete in the finals
instead of the current six.
According to a proposal disclosed
last week, byes would be eliminated and the competition would be
shortened, something the committee believes would make the event more
appealing to fans and television.
Thirty-six teams would still compete
at regionals and 12 would still advance to the championship round.
Other recommended changes include
counting the score of each gymnast on each apparatus toward the team's
final score, instead of throwing out the lowest of the six individual
scores. The format would only be used in regional and national
championships.
The changes still need final approval
before they would be implemented in 2011.
___
On the Net:
NCAA: http://ncaa.org
Also of Interest
[Back to Top]
[Back
to Women's Village Home]
[Add
Women's Village to Your IE Favorites]
|
