Thousands of women rally nationwide for abortion rights and feminist causes

Demonstrators from Texas to Connecticut and Washington DC carried signs and chanted: ‘We won’t go back!’

Thousands of women rallied Saturday in the nation’s capital and elsewhere in support of abortion rights and other feminist causes ahead of Tuesday’s election.

Demonstrators carried posters and signs through city streets, chanting slogans such as: “We won’t go back!” Some men joined with them. Speakers urged people to vote in the election – not only for president but also on down-ballot issues such as abortion-rights amendments that are going before voters in various states.

Continue reading...

From contaminated blood to birth trauma, how female NHS patients’ concerns are ignored

England’s patient safety commissioner says NHS patients raising concerns are dismissed as ‘difficult women’

England’s patient safety commissioner, Henrietta Hughes, has warned that NHS patients raising concerns are too often “gaslighted”, “fobbed off” or dismissed as “difficult women”.

“It shows a very dismissive and very old fashioned, patronising attitude to patients who have identified problems and need to have their voices heard,” she said.

Continue reading...

Trump voices ‘strong support’ for IVF treatments after Alabama ruling

Republicans struggle to find a unified response to the state’s ruling that threw into question the legal status of human embryos

Donald Trump has voiced “strong support” for IVF treatments, days after a ruling by the Alabama supreme court threw into question the legal status of human embryos and several providers in the state cut off access to the procedure.

The former US president said that under his leadership, the Republican party “will always support the creation of strong, thriving, healthy American families”.

Continue reading...

Scientists call for review of UK’s 14-day rule on embryo research

Extending the limit could help uncover causes of recurrent miscarriage and congenital conditions, experts say

Scientists are calling for a review of the 14-day rule on embryo research, saying that extending the limit could help uncover the causes of recurrent miscarriage and congenital conditions.

Until now, scientists studying the earliest stages of life have been restricted to cultivating embryos up to the equivalent of 14 days of development. They can then pick up the path of development several weeks later, on pregnancy scans and from material donated from terminations.

Continue reading...

Five million children worldwide die before fifth birthday, says UN

Almost half of deaths occur in babies’ first month and most could be prevented with better healthcare according to campaigners

Five million children worldwide died before their fifth birthday in 2021, with almost half (47%) dying during their first month, according to new UN figures.

Most of the deaths could have been prevented with better healthcare, say campaigners, adding that deaths among newborn babies haven’t reduced significantly since 2017.

Continue reading...

Give us a grandchild or $650,000, say Indian couple suing son

Parents lament pilot son ‘still not planning a baby’ after six years of marriage and demand compensation for exhausting their savings on him

An Indian couple are taking their son to court demanding that he and his wife either produce a grandchild within a year or cough up almost $650,000.

Sanjeev and Sadhana Prasad say that they exhausted their savings raising and educating their pilot son and paying for a lavish wedding.

Continue reading...

‘I’m scared I’ve left it too late to have kids’: the men haunted by their biological clocks

It’s certainly not just women who worry about ageing and procreation – and now men have begun speaking about their own deep anxieties

It was when Connor woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom that he started thinking about it. The 38-year-old civil servant from London got back into bed and couldn’t sleep: he was spiralling. “I thought: ‘Shit, I might not be able to have children. It actually might not happen,’” he says.

“It started with me thinking about how I’m looking to buy a house, and everything is happening too late in my life,” Connor says. “Then I started worrying about how long it would take me to save again to get married, after I buy the house. I was doing the maths on that – when will I be able to afford to be married, own a house and start having kids? Probably in my 40s. Then I started freaking out about what the quality of my sperm will be like by then. What if something’s wrong with the child? And then I thought, oh no, what if me and my girlfriend don’t work out? I’ll be in an even worse scenario in a few years.”

Continue reading...

The great sperm heist: ‘They were playing with people’s lives’

Paul was in his 80s when someone called to say she was his daughter, conceived in a fertility clinic with his sperm. The only problem? He’d never donated any

For 40 years, Catherine Simpson thought she knew who she was: a nurse, a mother of three, a daughter and a sister. She looked like her mother, Sarah, but had the same temperament as her father, George: calm, unflustered, kind.

Then her father died. There was a dispute over his will, and that led her mother to call and tell her something that made the ground dissolve beneath her feet. George had had a vasectomy long before Catherine was born. She and her brother had been donor conceived in Harley Street using the sperm of two different anonymous men. George was not her biological father.

Continue reading...

‘You’ve never faced these choices’: Jen Psaki tells reporter on anti-abortion question – video

The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, made an earnest retort to a journalist questioning Joe Biden's support for abortion. The US president condemned the supreme court decision not to consider a Texas law that in effect bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

'It's a woman's body and it's her choice. I know you've never faced those choices, nor have you ever been pregnant,' said Psaki adding that the president believed a woman's choices should be respected

Continue reading...

‘Very pragmatic’: 42% of Australian women are open to egg freezing as a work perk

Demand for fertility preservation has ballooned in the last decade. New research by Monash suggests many are happy for their employer to pay for it

Last year, while working from home as a result of the Covid pandemic, Emily went through the process of freezing her eggs.

It was something the 26-year-old Australian had been interested in for several years, but she made the decision to undergo the procedure when her company introduced it as an employee benefit.

Continue reading...

Scientists form human cell clumps that act like early-stage embryos

Cultured stem cells turn into blastoid ‘balls’, like natural blastocysts after egg fertilisation

Scientists have made clumps of human tissue that behave like early-stage embryos, a feat that promises to transform research into the first tentative steps of human development.

The clumps of cells, named blastoids, are less than a millimetre across and resemble structures called blastocysts, which form within a few days of an egg being fertilised. Typically blastocysts contain about 100 cells, which give rise to every tissue in the body.

Continue reading...

‘Could I feel what they were doing? Yes’: Rob Delaney on the pain and pleasure of his vasectomy

The actor and comedian decided it was time to have the procedure after he and his wife had had four children. Here he writes candidly about the experience, and why it was the kindest cut

I got a vasectomy a few months ago. A vasectomy is when they cut and tie off the vas deferens, which are these little tubes in your ball sack (scrotum) so that there’s no sperm (sperm) in your jizz (semen) when you bust (ejaculate). I did this because my wife and I don’t want her to get pregnant again. It doesn’t mean we don’t want any more kids, it just means that if we did have any more, they’d have to be adopted or stolen or left to us because friends or family with young kids died in a plane crash or had their brain stems blown apart by less-lethal rounds fired at them at point-blank range while they were waiting in an 11-hour line attempting to vote in November.

I figured after all my wife, Leah, and her body had done for our family, the least I could do was let a doctor slice into my bag and sterilise me. Leah had taken birth control for decades, which is a giant pain in the ass and also decidedly sexist pharmacological slavery. IMAGINE a man having to remember to not only take a pill every day, but also having to deal with employer-provided private insurance prescription plans in the US which drop you or sell your plan to another company without telling you, among other crimes. And messing up once could land you with – for example – an ectopic pregnancy that isn’t diagnosed soon enough because you’re afraid to go to the doctor due to your high deductible, so you literally die and are dead, in a cemetery. I think I speak for my bros when I say: “No thanks!”

Continue reading...

Having more sex makes early menopause less likely, research finds

Study of nearly 3,000 women suggests body may ‘choose’ not to invest in ovulation

Women who have sex more often are less likely to have an early menopause, according to research that raises the intriguing possibility that lifestyle factors could play a more significant role than previously thought in determining when the menopause occurs.

The study, based on data collected from nearly 3,000 women who were followed for 10 years, found that those who reported engaging in sexual activity weekly were 28% less likely to have experienced menopause at any given age than women who engaged in sexual activity less than monthly.

Continue reading...

Scientists stunned by discovery of ‘semi-identical’ twins

Boy and girl, now four, are only the second case of ‘sesquizygotic’ twins recorded

A pair of twins have stunned researchers after it emerged that they are neither identical nor fraternal – but something in between.

The team say the boy and girl, now four years old, are the second case of semi-identical twins ever recorded, and the first to be spotted while the mother was pregnant.

Continue reading...