Experience: I donated my uterus to a stranger – now we’re close friends

When her son was born, it felt like another member of our family had arrived

One day in June 2019, I was getting ready for work when a story on TV caught my attention. A woman was talking about donating her womb to a stranger. She explained why she’d decided to give someone the chance to experience pregnancy. As a mother of two, I was blown away.

At lunch I was glued to my phone, reading everything I could about the procedure: how the first successful uterus transplant had taken place in Sweden in 2013, and how the operation had been carried out in the US since 2016. How it was helping women who had lost their uteri due to cancer, or never developed one because of the congenital condition Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH).

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‘I was causing harm’: author Helen Jukes on motherhood and our polluted bodies

In her latest book, Mother Animal, the writer gives a personal account of the impact of ‘forever chemicals’ on her and her child during and after pregnancy

When Helen Jukes told her friends she was writing about motherhood and pollution, they advised her against it and warned she might make pregnant people more anxious than they already were. But she disagreed. Mother Animal, a personal account of Jukes’ pregnancy and early years of motherhood, details her growing realisation of how contaminated her body, and her baby, have become. And it’s something she thinks all would-be parents should be more aware of. There are chemicals from human industry in breast milk, amniotic fluid and bones, she writes. Toxicologists have found “forever chemicals” in embryos and foetuses at “every stage of pregnancy … in lung tissues, in livers”. It is inescapable.

Yet it is spoken about far too little. “I find it quite disrespectful to think that mothers wouldn’t be capable of handling [this] information,” she says when we meet at her home on the edge of the Peak District.

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I became absorbed in strangers’ fertility journeys online

What started as curiosity would turn into an emotional investment – and eventually, a lifeline

A few nights ago, my phone lit up with a TikTok notification: “WE’RE PREGNANT”. The message wasn’t from a friend. It was from an Australian couple, complete strangers. But social media knows me well because I felt something sharp and bright – joy and relief – for people I will never meet.

It’s strange to feel deeply for someone you’ve never spoken to, whose life is about as geographically far from yours as possible. But I was thrilled to see this pregnancy announcement, shared with millions, from someone I only knew through a few carefully curated moments. As someone who is fundamentally nosy – I will never not notice a “baby on board” badge or make up backstories for strangers – social media has always offered an irresistible window into other people’s lives.

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‘Alarming’ data reveals high diabetes risk for pregnant women in English jails

Freedom of information requests show that female prisoners are three times more likely to suffer gestational diabetes

Pregnant women in prison in England are three times more likely to be ­diagnosed with gestational ­diabetes than those on the outside, according to “alarming” new data.

Figures obtained through freedom of information (FoI) requests to NHS trusts providing healthcare to women’s prisons in England found 12% of women receiving care relating to pregnancy in 2023 were diagnosed with the condition, triple the national figure of 4%.

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The pill hasn’t been improved in years. No wonder women are giving up on it | Martha Gill

When contraception has stagnated for decades, it is hardly surprising it’s fallen victim to culture wars and a wellness cult

Something is changing when it comes to contraception. Lots of people aren’t using it. Last week we heard that this includes a third of young Irish people. Meanwhile, there has been a significant rise in abortions in England and Wales. Prescriptions for the contraceptive pill in England dropped from 432,600 in 2014 to 188,500 in 2021. And this month data from abortion clinics found that demand is being fuelled by women coming off the pill and using natural methods instead.

When the study compared contraception used by women seeking abortions in 2018 and in 2023, it found that the proportion using smartphones to track their menstrual cycle had increased from 0.4% to 2.5%. The use of hormonal contraception among this group fell from 19% to 11%, while the group not using any form of contraception when they became pregnant increased from 50% to 70%.

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All the president’s friends, from Natalie Harp and Daniel Penny to Andrew Tate

There are three tried-and-tested strategies for getting into Donald Trump’s inner circle, from adoration to misogyny

There are three tried-and-tested strategies for getting into Donald Trump’s inner circle. No 1: be young, blond and so obsessed with the president that even the Secret Service think it’s kinda weird. That strategy certainly seems to have worked out well for Natalie Harp, a former far-right cable host who is now an official aide to Trump.

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Prayer and prosecutions: the US ‘hate group’ waging war over Britain’s abortion clinic buffer zones

Anti-abortion campaigners cheer as JD Vance brands safe zones an attack on ‘liberties of religious Britons’

Rachael Clarke remembers life before buffer zones. Almost every day, the head of staff at the UK’s biggest abortion provider would get emails from staff worried about protesters outside clinics – and women crying in the waiting room.

Some of the protesters had huge placards with graphic images of foetuses. Others held candlelit vigils and said prayers. One scattered baby clothes in the bushes. “We had every­thing from people telling women that having an abortion was putting their baby in a meat grinder to people following nurses down the road in the dark telling them they were killing babies,” says Clarke.

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‘A scary time to be a scientist’: how medical research cuts will hurt the maternal mortality crisis

Republican-run states may see worst fallout from slashes to NIH medical funding as maternal mortality climbs in US

On Tuesday, a few days after the Trump administration announced its plan to slash billions of dollars in funding for biomedical and behavioral research, an investigator at a maternal health research center in Pennsylvania told Dr Meghan Lane-Fall that the cuts may lead her to leave academia altogether.

Lane-Fall urged her not to make any sudden moves. “It’s not like nothing has happened. No one’s threatened her job,” said Lane-Fall, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “But if she looks six months down the line, it looks uncertain.”

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When my daughter’s pregnancy was on the line, it felt like history was repeating itself…

Joanna Moorhead recalls her daughter’s difficult birth as she watchers her go through the same thing 32 years later

It was a routine antenatal appointment with many weeks still to go until the birth. “Things aren’t quite as we’d hope,” said the midwife, a worried look on her face. “You need to go straight to hospital.”

The date was 8 April 1992. But also, it was 1 August 2024. The bump in 1992 was mine; the baby, who would be born the following day, at 29 weeks’ gestation (“term” is 40 weeks) was my daughter Rosie. The bump in 2024 was hers: 32 years on, history was repeating itself.

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Sorry, Lily Collins, but when people outsource childbirth, their motives really count | Martha Gill

Whether it’s infertility, to save a career or pure altruism, is there ever a reason that can morally justify surrogacy?

An online row last week underlines something we all know but which many prefer to ignore. There is something not right about surrogacy. The furore started with an Instagram post by Lily Collins: a picture of her new daughter, Tove, in a little basket, under which the Emily in Paris actor expressed “endless gratitude for our incredible surrogate”. Reaction split along predictable lines – those in favour of surrogacy, and those against.

What was striking was that it also split along another fissure: Collins’s possible motives. It was OK, some felt, to use a surrogate if you have infertility problems. But not in order to keep your figure, help your career, or because pregnancy is taxing and you are rich enough to outsource it.

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Racial gap widened in deaths among US mothers around childbirth in 2023

Black women died at rate nearly 3.5 times higher than white women, CDC data shows

Black women in the US died at a rate nearly 3.5 times higher than white women around the time of childbirth in 2023, as maternal mortality fell below pre-pandemic levels overall but racial gaps widened, according to federal health data released Wednesday.

In 2021 and 2022, the maternal death rate for Black women was about 2.6 times higher than white women.

The maternal death rate for white women dropped from 19 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2022 to 14.5 per 100,000 in 2023.

The rate for Black women went from 49.5 to a little above 50, though the report says that increase was not statistically significant.

The rate for Hispanic women dropped from about 17 to about 12.

The rate for Asian Americans fell from about 13 to about 11.

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Cuny graduate school rolls back protections for pregnant students

Move comes amid Trump’s overturn of Title IX guidance, limiting schools’ liability in sexual misconduct cases

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A graduate school at the City University of New York (Cuny), a university with 25 colleges spread across New York City, has rolled back rules meant to protect the rights of pregnant students, the school said on Tuesday in an email obtained by the Guardian.

The change came as a consequence of a recent Trump administration move that limits schools’ liability in sexual misconduct cases, according to the email.

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