Police have demanded records from UK abortion provider 32 times since 2020

British Pregnancy Advisory Service says there is ‘genuine concern’ over rising number of investigations

• Senior Labour figures seeking to water down plans to decriminalise abortion

A leading provider of abortion services has received more than 30 demands to hand over medical records of women to police in the past four years, increasing to an average of one a month since October.

Rachael Clarke, the chief of staff at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), said police had also escalated demands on other charities and NHS providers of abortion services in recent years.

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Woman whose baby was stillborn in HMP Styal praises sentencing changes

Louise Powell says she hopes new guidance means fewer pregnant women are jailed and it can be the legacy of her child Brooke

A former prisoner who gave birth to a stillborn baby in a jail toilet has welcomed changes that campaigners hope will reduce the number of pregnant women locked up, as a “legacy” for the daughter she lost.

The Sentencing Council is announcing significant new guidance on Monday that judges and magistrates in England and Wales must consider before passing sentences on pregnant women and new mothers. A new mitigating factor in sentencing has been introduced – pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal care – which replaces current guidance relating to this group of women who currently come under the broader heading of “sole or primary carer”.

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Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood review – all of life starts here

Arnolfini, Bristol
Plunging into the joy, heartache, mystery and amazement of motherhood, more than 100 works by artists including Paula Rego, Chantal Joffe and Celia Paul offer a riveting riposte to the infamous pram in the hall

“There is no more sombre enemy of good art,” wrote Cyril Connolly, notoriously, “than the pram in the hall.” Have kids, runs his supercilious maxim, and your creativity is well and truly screwed. The fact that great art has been made by parents for millennia seems not to have troubled him, nor the insult to those who give birth, or their babies. Not even, as this terrific Hayward Gallery touring exhibition shows, that procreation itself may be the vital inspiration.

Acts of Creation is riveting from first to last, an exceptional (and touring) anthology of contemporary artworks to startle, move and awe, all one hundred and more plunging deep into motherhood. It opens with an object of stirring mystery. Lying on a plinth is a form suggestive of a woman’s pelvic anatomy, delicate but strong, fashioned out of animal horns, twigs, steel and earthy red soil. Fine silver wires run between the cavities.

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I feel for women misled over egg-freezing. If I’d believed doctors during my transition, my kids wouldn’t be here | Freddy McConnell

We all deserve better from healthcare providers who sell false promise to some, while shutting down options for others

You can’t have missed the conversations about the rise of freezing eggs for non-medical or “social” reasons in recent years, which forms part of an explosion in the use of fertility treatments, all with the promise of giving more options to prospective parents. The starting point is often the question of whether someone, almost always a wealthy, straight, white woman, should freeze her eggs as insurance against her “biological clock”, career development and/or the risk of not finding a partner in time with whom to start a family.

Having noticed the trend, I began to see that the same detail was missing from piece after piece: the statistical likelihood of these frozen eggs leading to live births. With notable exceptions, the focus is on affordability and the social factors that are causing so many more people to opt for this treatment, rather than discussion of what happens when someone actually uses the eggs to try to conceive. Frozen eggs are being marketed and spoken about as “fertility nest eggs” – even as more and more evidence about low success rates have emerged.

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I’m finding it hard to accept that I may never have a daughter | Ask Annalisa Barbieri

Try not to dwell on what you feel is missing, but instead focus on the positive relationships and values you can nurture with your sons
• Every week Annalisa Barbieri addresses a family-related problem sent in by a reader

I gave birth to my second son several months ago. In my first pregnancy I had no preference and was excited to find out I was expecting a boy, especially as my partner really wanted a son. Some of my closest friends also had boys.

However, with my second child I had my heart set on a girl. When I learned we were expecting another boy, I was disappointed and began feeling less connected with and happy about the pregnancy. To make matters worse, the same friends have recently had, or are about to have, girls this time round.

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Thank you, NHS England, for offering baby-loss leave. This kindness should be every employee’s right | Kat Brown

Losing a pregnancy can be physically and emotionally devastating, yet only about one-fifth of employers give paid leave after miscarriage

• Kat Brown is the editor of No One Talks About This Stuff: 22 Stories of Almost Parenthood

The news that NHS England will offer paid leave to staff who have a miscarriage in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, as part of a wider pregnancy and baby loss policy, made me gasp. It is almost startling in both its compassion and the light it shines on the enormous burden that parents thus far have had to carry alone. The birth parent can take 10 days, a partner five. Staff who miscarry after six months can take paid maternity leave. This is a significant amount of time for something that, up until now, people have had to suffer alone.

Loss is all around us, often suffered in silence. A friend had a miscarriage last weekend. Another friend recently lost her much longed for twins. Another remembers her losses by lighting a candle and posting a photo of it online, as part of the Wave of Light during baby loss awareness week in October: I had no idea she had gone through that until social media gave her the opportunity to grieve. These are just three that I know about off the top of my head. I know that, even walking down the street, I am likely to be passing people going through the mixed feelings of pain, grief and, for some, perhaps, relief, that come with a miscarriage. One in four pregnancies end in baby loss. That is an awful lot of pain being swallowed down.

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Our Body review – a brave, unblinking, hospital’s-eye view of women’s health

Documentarist Claire Simon films women, including herself, receiving care in a women’s health, obstetrics and gynaecology ward at a Parisian hospital

Film-maker Claire Simon operates the camera herself for this extraordinary film, assuming the traditional vérité position of an observant fly on the wall and silently recording consultations and procedures in a women’s health, obstetrics and gynaecology ward at a Parisian hospital. Except at a crucial point, two-thirds into the film’s 168-minute running time, the fly turns the camera on herself when she finds out she too has cancer, just like several of the people she’s been filming. Simon’s willingness to open up and reveal her condition is remarkable, but by this point in the film viewers will have been made profoundly aware of how open and brave every patient we have met has been for letting her – and us – into these intensely intimate moments.

Following a natural order of sorts, the first women we meet are pregnant and, in two cases, are seeking a termination. There’s no judgment from any of the doctors, or if there were it would be hard to tell, since this was filmed during Covid and everyone is wearing masks. That said, one doctor politely asks each of his patients to de-mask for a moment, so everyone can see each other more fully.

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Greenlandic women sue Danish state for contraceptive ‘violation’

Group action demands compensation over alleged fitting of IUDs in women and children in late 1960s

Nearly 150 Greenlandic women have sued the Danish state, alleging that they were fitted with the contraceptive coil without their consent or knowledge.

A group of 143 women took legal action on Monday, demanding a collective payment of close to 43m Danish kroner (£4.9m) for what they describe as a violation of their human rights.

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Scientists grow ‘mini-organs’ from cells shed by foetuses in womb

Creating organoids from cells found in amniotic fluid could bring insights into cause and progression of malformations

Researchers have grown mini-organs from cells shed by foetuses in the womb in a breakthrough that promises to shed light on human development throughout late pregnancy.

They created the 3D lumps of tissue know as organoids from lung, kidney and intestinal cells recovered from the amniotic fluid that bathes and protects the foetus in the uterus.

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