Whether or not you celebrate Thanksgiving and/or Christmas, if you live in the United States, you have been and will be inundated with thinking about things from October (August?) to the new year. 

To help me resist the madness of black Friday, small business Saturday and cyber Monday, I have determined to meditate on the things I already have for which I am grateful.  To that end, I put together a ist of things I am thankful for as a physician for women.  Over the next five weeks, I’ll be writing about each one and why it made the list. My top five (in no special order) are:

1.     Modern cesarean section

2.     Invention of birth control pills

3.     Widespread access to family planning

4.     Safe, legal abortion

5.     Pap smears

Each of these has brought revolutionary changes to the lives of individual women and to the socio-economic and cultural status of women as a group. It is no wonder several of them are at the heart of so many current controversies.

Stay tuned.