What is Primodos and why were 100 UK families seeking compensation?

Concerns about birth defects were first raised in the 1960s but evidence for causal link to pregnancy test remains contentious

The high court in London has struck out a bid by families, who believe their babies were harmed, to sue the pharmaceutical company behind the hormone-based pregnancy test, Primodos. Scientists first published concerns about birth defects in the 1960s, a decade before the tests were withdrawn, but the evidence for a causal link remains contentious.

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UK families lose bid for compensation over Primodos pregnancy test drug

High court rules there is insufficient new evidence of causal link between hormone-based test and birth defects

An attempt by more than 100 UK families to seek compensation for birth defects they say were caused by the hormone-based pregnancy test Primodos has been struck out by the high court.

The families, who believe their babies suffered a range of congenital abnormalities due to the drug, were hoping to rekindle a civil case against the manufacturer after a previous attempt collapsed in 1982. However, Mrs Justice Yip ruled that there was insufficient new evidence to demonstrate a causal link between the tests, which were used until the 1970s, and congenital malformations, and that as a result the families did not have a realistic chance of succeeding in their claim.

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Who says clothes aren’t a matter of life or death? In Succession they’re both | Morwenna Ferrier

Grieving and pregnant, Shiv Roy’s wardrobe speaks to those of us who have tried to hold it down at life-changing moments

In the days after my mother’s death, I spent a lot of time online looking for shoes to wear to her funeral.

Not an obvious reaction to grief. But while I had a dress – a black one with pretty red peonies that I kept rolled up in my bag when her illness began to accelerate during the summer – we were in lockdown so the shops were shut, and I wasn’t going to wear Birkenstocks. Eventually, I found some brogues on eBay and, after wiping them with Dettol, tried everything on. I looked nice, put together. But this was the problem. Looking “put together” seemed like the wrong response when I felt anything but. On the day of her funeral, I wore my mother’s navy skirt suit. It was too big and I was too hot, but for both reasons felt much more appropriate.

Morwenna Ferrier is the Guardian’s fashion and lifestyle editor

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‘I didn’t even know men could get it’: the hidden impact of male postnatal depression

Postnatal depression affects up to 15% of new mothers, but studies suggest almost as many fathers also show symptoms – and little is being done to help them

Seventy hours into the birth of his first child, Lewis was told that his wife needed to be rushed into surgery for an emergency C-section. The pregnancy had been straightforward and full of nervous excitement, but, as crisis presented itself, Lewis found himself unprepared.

“I still can’t talk about it properly now, five years on,” the 35-year-old says. “It was horrific. I didn’t know what was going on and I couldn’t do anything except stand by and watch as my wife and my baby’s lives were potentially in danger. The whole thing was a blur, but it felt like it would go on for ever.”

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England’s first not-for-profit fertility clinic closes within a year of opening

Exclusive: Clinic operated by BPAS was intended to provide IVF at cost price but was sold to private provider

England’s first not-for-profit fertility clinic has shut within a year of opening and has been sold to a private provider, in what one of its founders called “a tragedy for women”.

The game-changing clinic – operated by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), better known for providing abortions – promised to take the profit out of fertility treatment when it opened in December 2021.

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Is This OK? by Harriet Gibsone review – second life

A woman comes of age on the internet in a memoir that swings between funny and profound

Harriet the Spy is a 1964 childrens’ book about a little girl who snoops relentlessly on her neighbours. Harriet Gibsone did the same thing when she was young. Now in her late 30s, she still shares with the fictional Harriet a powerful imagination and endless fascination with others. Harriet the Spy was banned in a number of American schools; apparently morally upright people didn’t approve of watchful girls trying to figure out the world on their own terms. I love these characters, nurturing as they do some feeling of control in a world where they do not have any.

Is This OK? is a memoir, full of finely told stories that were once secrets existing only in the writer’s mind; addictions, obsessions, weirdnesses. Gibsone came of age at the same time as the internet, her own development shaped by its strange currents. She chooses episodes from her life and makes some of them funny – laugh-out-loud-on-the-train funny; some of them are frightening and sad. Many illuminate a bigger truth about living at this peculiar time and in the grey area between the online and offline worlds. That is, of course, where many of us spend hours each day, without fully realising it, even as researchers warn us of the negative impact on self-esteem and mental health.

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Overhaul UK fertility law to keep up with advancements, expert says

Exclusive: IVF in Britain ‘is the most successful and the safest it has ever been’, says Tim Child

A leading fertility expert has said the law should be overhauled so that rapid advancements in reproductive science do not stall.

Prof Tim Child of the University of Oxford said IVF in the UK was “the most successful and the safest that it has ever been”, and noted that the chance of having a baby from a single embryo was rising and the likelihood of having multiple births dropping.

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Babies are dying because of NHS failings, poverty and inequality, charities warn

Maternity services need urgent improvement and investment to meet government target of halving stillbirths and neonatal deaths

Hundreds of babies are dying unnecessarily because overstretched maternity services are delivering substandard care and struggling to overcome entrenched poverty and racial inequalities, a report has warned.

The report by baby loss charities Sands and Tommy’s, which will be published on Monday, says the government’s aim to halve the number of stillbirths and neonatal deaths in England by 2025 is stalling, while there is no target in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

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Simple measures could save 1 million babies a year, doctors plead

‘Silent health disaster’ across developing world could be checked by spending less than £1bn on making ordinary antenatal procedures available to all, says new analysis

The lives of more than a million babies a year could be saved across the developing world if mothers were given access to simple, low-cost health measures such as vitamins, antimalarials and aspirin, a new analysis has found.

The study, focused on the “silent public health disaster” of babies being born “too small or too soon”, comes as the United Nations warns that progress on reducing newborn deaths and stillbirths has flatlined since 2015, and that patchy, underfunded antenatal care is partially to blame.

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My boyfriend of seven years always wanted kids. Now we’re 35, I’m ready – and he’s changed his mind

He shocked me by saying he doesn’t want to bring anyone into a world that is getting worse. I love him, but my chance to be a mother is slipping away

I have been with my boyfriend for seven years and we are both 35. We’ve had great times together working abroad, but one of the things that attracted me to him initially (and made me want us to move back to the UK together, post-Brexit) was that he was so open to having kids. He really loves his sister’s children and he’s so good with them. He’d make a great dad.

Neither of us earn a huge amount and the cost of living has hit us hard. We’ve also been in and out of jobs. I have been too busy to think about having a family, but time has crept up on me. When I asked recently whether he still wanted kids, he shocked me by saying we couldn’t afford them, plus he doesn’t want to bring kids into a world that seems to be getting worse, financially and politically.

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Poor mental health support during pregnancy risks UK women’s lives

Perinatal mental health services do not meet national quality standards, report finds

Women’s lives are being put at risk by substandard mental health care during their pregnancy and in the first year after childbirth in most parts of the UK, a report has found.

About one in every five women develops a mental illness at some point during the perinatal period, the stage from pregnancy up to a year after giving birth. However, none of the health and social care boards in Northern Ireland or Wales met the national quality standards created by the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Perinatal Quality Network (PQN).

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Melbourne midwife suspended over two separate high-risk homebirths

Vcat has ruled Ulyana Kora will be suspended for her role as a private midwife while working for Ten Moons, a home birthing service

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A Melbourne midwife has been suspended for three months after complaints were made about two homebirths that each required an ambulance to be called.

The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (Vcat) has ruled Ulyana Kora will be suspended from 1 June after she attended two separate high-risk homebirths in October 2018 as part of her role as a private midwife working for Ten Moons, a home birthing service.

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Failure to recognise ectopic pregnancy causing women’s deaths, says expert

Prof Marian Knight says action needed to improve diagnosis of condition in which fertilised egg implants itself outside womb

• ‘Worst thing that’s ever happened to me’: the trauma of ectopic pregnancy

Women are dying or suffering avoidable harm because of a failure to recognise ectopic pregnancy, one of the country’s leading experts on maternal health has said.

Speaking to the Guardian, Prof Marian Knight of the University of Oxford, who leads a national research programme on maternal deaths, called for action to improve diagnosis of the acute, life-threatening condition, in which a fertilised egg implants itself outside the womb, normally in the fallopian tube. Ectopic pregnancies are never viable and if left untreated can result in the tube rupturing, causing potentially fatal internal bleeding.

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