Legion of Angels News Archive

Parents of children with attention deficit problems are always looking for new strategies to help their children cope. An interesting new study suggests that spending time in nature may help.

A small study conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign looked at how the environment influenced a child’s concentration skills. The researchers evaluated 17 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, who all took part in three 20-minute walks in a park, a residential neighborhood and a downtown area.

After each walk, the children were given a standard test called Digit Span Backwards, in which a series of numbers are said aloud and the child recites them backwards. The test is a useful measure of attention and concentration because practice doesn’t improve the score. The order of the walks varied for all the children, and the tester wasn’t aware of which walk the child had just taken.

The study, published online in the August The Journal of Attention Disorders, found that children were able to focus better after the “green” walks compared to walks in other settings.

Although the study is small, the data support several earlier studies suggesting that natural settings influence psychological health. In 2004, a survey of parents of 450 children found that “green” outdoor activities reduced A.D.H.D. symptoms more than activities in other settings.

“What this particular study tells us is that the physical environment matters,” said Frances E. Kuo, director of the university’s Landscape and Human Health Laboratory. “We don’t know what it is about the park, exactly — the greenness or lack of buildings — that seems to improve attention.”

Dr. Kuo noted that the study used tight controls to make sure that the walks were identical except for the environment. Who the child was with, noise levels, the length of time, the time of day and whether the child was on medication stayed constant.

“If we kept everything else the same, and we just changed the environment, we still saw a measurable difference in children’s symptoms,” Dr. Kuo said. “And that’s completely new. No one has done a study looking at a child in different environments, in a controlled comparison where everything else is the same.”

Dr. Kuo said more children were initially involved in the study, but logistical problems like weather changes, late arrivals or changes in medication made it difficult to maintain tight control, leaving the study with just 17 children from which to draw conclusions.

Despite the small size, the study is important because it involves an objective test of attention and doesn’t rely on children’s or parents’ impressions. During the walks, all of the children were unmedicated — participants who normally took medications to control their A.D.H.D. symptoms stayed off the drugs on the days of the walks.

The researchers found that a “dose of nature” worked as well or better than a dose of medication on the child’s ability to concentrate. What’s not clear is how long the nature effect can last.

Dr. Kuo said that while there are “hints” exposure to green outdoor settings offers a benefit, the science isn’t advanced enough to give parents a strict formula.

“We can’t say for sure, ‘two hours of outdoor play will get you this many days of good behavior,’ but we can say it’s worth trying,” she said. “We can say that as little as 20 minutes of outdoor exposure could potentially buy you an afternoon or a couple of hours to get homework done.”

Dr. Kuo said it’s notable that parents themselves consistently report benefits for their children from green settings.

“One reason we believe this is that if the effect were short-lived, we don’t think that parents would have so consistently observed it,” she said. “But they do. They report it over and over.”

Source — The New York Times

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – Two years after a strict abortion ban here was overturned by voters, backers have brought a similar measure — but one laced with complexities that could bode well for its passage, and ultimately could bring about the challenge to Roe v. Wade desired by abortion foes nationwide.

The referendum has sparked a door-to-door battle to persuade voters that is gaining national attention. Proponents and foes of the ban aim to raise millions of dollars for ads and other campaign expenses.

Groups opposing the ban are planning an event Tuesday in Washington, D.C., that will feature the leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and NARAL Pro-Choice America. Supporters of the ban are gathering endorsements from conservative leaders, such as Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an influential lobbying group.

“While South Dakota accounts for only 0.1% of all abortions, it has a potentially disproportionate effect on public policy, because people are seeking to create a vehicle to overturn Roe,” says Sarah Stoesz, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood for Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.

South Dakota, with a population of less than 800,000, bestows just three electoral votes. But the abortion fight nevertheless has implications for the presidential election, because the new president could change the makeup of a Supreme Court that might reconsider Roe v. Wade. That 1973 ruling, based on a Texas case, held that a woman’s right to have an abortion is covered by privacy rights protected by the Constitution. If it were overturned, regulation of abortion would revert to state governments.

Two years ago, South Dakota voters rejected an abortion ban in a referendum, 56% to 44%. But polls then showed that many who voted against the ban would have switched sides if the proposal had made exceptions for women impregnated through rape or incest.

Those exceptions — as well as one for women in poor health — are included in the new measure. But they are far from simple; the full text of the proposed law is more than 2,400 words. In the voting booth this November, citizens will be presented only a 249-word summary. Abortion-rights advocates say the exceptions are so narrowly drawn as to be meaningless.

“We need to help people understand that the exceptions are very complicated — this is still a total ban,” says Jan Nicolay, co-chairwoman of the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, a group that includes ministers, business organizations, Planned Parenthood and other individuals and organizations who oppose the ban.

On the contrary, say ban supporters, they have to win over abortion foes who feel a new law should contain zero exceptions. Outside a VoteYesForLife.com tent at a Christian music festival last month in Rapid City, Beth Perkins, a 54-year-old nurse, said she will reluctantly vote for the ban despite her discomfort with the exceptions. “I know [of similar] situations with other people where they didn’t get an abortion,” she said.

Patti Giebink, the group’s treasurer and an obstetrician and gynecologist, handed out a written statement from the Roman Catholic bishop of Sioux Falls, which said that Catholics could vote for the ban in good conscience. As she handed the statement to people, she told them, “This lays the foundation for the next step” — a more-stringent ban like the one that failed in 2006.

Dr. Giebink says she worked part time as an abortion doctor in the 1990s, but says she stopped after becoming troubled by the contrast of performing abortions at one job and delivering premature infants at the other. “There’s no way to go back and restore the life I took, but I need to work to change the laws that don’t protect life,” she says.

Several states have added legal barriers to abortion, and advocates are seeking more restrictions. In Colorado, voters in November will consider a “personhood” amendment that would grant state constitutional protections from the time of fertilization. Though the amendment wouldn’t automatically outlaw abortion, it is designed to create the legal foundation for a ban.

South Dakota has become a focal point of the debate largely because of Leslee Unruh, an activist who pushed the 2006 ban and helped get this year’s measure on the ballot.

After having an abortion she says she now regrets, Ms. Unruh, 53, founded the Alpha Center, which counsels women on alternatives to abortion, and the National Abstinence Clearinghouse in Sioux Falls, which promotes abstinence-only sex education. She says her goal is to see Roe v. Wade overturned. “We believe this is historical,” she says.

Abortion already is limited in South Dakota. Women who want an elective abortion usually must go to the Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls, which performed 701 abortions last year. Doctors travel there from Minnesota because few local physicians will perform abortions. A recent federal court ruling on a 2005 state law requires doctors to tell patients an abortion will “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”

Ban proponents hope it would be challenged in court and eventually entice the Supreme Court to revisit Roe. That is where the presidential race comes in. Democratic Sen. Barack Obama has said abortion should remain legal and wants to preserve Roe, while Republican Sen. John McCain wants Roe to be overturned.

The exceptions in the new South Dakota proposal create some knotty questions for voters. For instance, should a woman be forced to continue a pregnancy if the fetus isn’t going to survive? How ill must a woman be to qualify for an abortion under an exception for a woman in poor health?

The health exception permits an abortion if there is a “serious risk” of a “substantial and irreversible impairment” of a major organ or system. But doctors could be prosecuted if they are found to have disregarded “accepted standards of medical practice.”

Marvin Buehner, a Rapid City obstetrician and gynecologist who is campaigning against the ban, says he has performed abortions for seriously ill patients, including a woman with rectal cancer who needed chemotherapy and radiation. But he says he wouldn’t perform that abortion if the ban passed, at the risk of spending 10 years in prison. The phrase “accepted standards of medical practice,” he adds, “is so vague and nebulous that no physicians I know, myself included, would take the chance.”

One Saturday last month, the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, which opposes the ban, dispatched volunteers to a Sioux Falls neighborhood to explain the nuances of the ban’s exceptions.

The canvassing wasn’t easy. Most people appeared to be uncomfortable discussing the topic. Many barely opened their doors. A middle-aged man peeking around his screen door asked 29-year-old volunteer Jonathan Drew: “You’re for abortion? You’re for choice?” Mr. Drew responded, “We’re saying the ban is too restrictive.” The man accepted a flier and shut the door.

Ms. Nicolay, the group’s co-chairwoman, says the group plans to raise money statewide and nationally, through house parties and online solicitations. Canvassers aim to visit or call thousands of homes. She says she remains optimistic that voters will defeat the ban. “I still believe people do not want the government telling them what to do,” she says.

Source — The Wall Street Journal