by: posted Thursday, May 10, 2012 Babies born in wealthier
countries generally stayed in the womb longer. But the rate of
prematurity in the United States remains high, at more than 12
percent of live births. That's about 5 percentage points higher
than in Russia, China and Canada and similar to rates in Kenya,
Thailand and India. Some of the 500,000 early births in the
United States each year can be explained by the increase in the
number of women who opt to have children later in life or
undergo fertility treatments -- problems of a well-educated,
health-care-rich country. Planned Caesarean sections also
contribute to the numbers here, as do high rates of obesity. But
much of it also can be blamed on the same obstacles faced by
pregnant women in third-world nations: no access to family
planning and no care or inadequate care before and during
pregnancy. The authors of "Born Too Soon ," a new report on
premature births, stress that too many babies are born early
worldwide and that prematurity rates are incre