US maternity wards face wave of closures as Medicaid cuts kick in

Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ spending cuts will be fully felt next year, but hospitals are already feeling the squeeze

Maternity wards across the United States are facing a wave of closures as cuts to federal Medicaid funding take effect, experts have warned.

According to analysis by the non-profit Protect Our Care, 52 maternity wards have closed since the HR1 bill was announced in July 2025, with a further eight having announced their upcoming closure.

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‘I thought the baby would change him’: the women whose pregnancies are blighted by domestic abuse

An estimated 20,000 cases are disclosed to maternity services in England every year. Two survivors tell their stories

Evie bought the baby monitor with a rare flicker of enthusiasm, having become increasingly numb as her pregnancy progressed. She liked that it would send video footage to her phone. “I thought, ‘This is really good. Not only can you hear the baby – you can see the baby.’” Unfortunately, her partner appreciated the monitor too. Soon she was carrying it around the house on his orders, so he could watch her. “He used it as surveillance,” she says.

By then she was worn down, and terrified. He had become more controlling since they learned she was pregnant. By the seventh month he had become physically abusive, too. “We were just lying in bed watching something,” she recalls of the first attack. “An argument broke out but it started getting overly aggressive … It just felt more threatening and he looked really agitated. So I ended up shimmying over and sitting on the edge of the bed. All of a sudden he just swung the biggest punch at my arm. Then he did it again. The impact was like whiplash.”

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New Jersey congresswoman LaMonica McIver faces legal deadline after giving birth to second child

She must decide by the end of the week whether to seek further review of federal charges over a confrontation with ICE agents at Delaney Hall

A US congresswoman who just gave birth to a baby girl faces a deadline this week on whether to seek a rehearing of a federal case against her by the Trump administration after an oversight visit to an immigration detention facility.

LaMonica McIver, 40, represents New Jersey’s 10th congressional district. She gave birth to her second child last Thursday – a rarity for a sitting member of Congress. She is only the 15th member of Congress to give birth while serving and part of a small subset of congresswomen who have school-age children.

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‘I do not know if the doctor survived’: young mothers recall ‘living hell’ of Nepal’s floods

Kalpana Nepali was seven months pregnant when the catastrophic flash floods hit last month, while Pooja Pariyal spent three days on a hospital roof waiting to be rescued. Now, they are living precariously in temporary shelters

For three days, Pooja Pariyal waited on the roof of Trishuli hospital with her three-month-old daughter, Ridhika. On the ground below and around the building, most of her town had been destroyed and churned into a sea of mud in the catastrophic flash floods that surged through the Himayalan border region of Nepal and Tibet in August.

“Those three days were living hell for me, with no food, no working toilet and no one to help with the baby,” she says. “I had nothing to clean my baby’s soiled clothes. My milk supply had reduced because I was hungry and this poor little thing would cry her lungs out.

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‘12 weeks and SO disgusted by my dog’: what happens when you’re pregnant and can’t stand your pet?

There may be almost no research on pet aversion during and post-pregnancy, but it may not be particularly rare

About three weeks into her first pregnancy, Sylvia Luu began to loathe the smell of her border collie mix, Ranger.

Luu could hardly be in the same room as Ranger without becoming nauseous. His drool repulsed her, and she found the smell of his fur so disgusting she wore a nose plug all day.

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‘I wanted to help another family’: four surrogates on how they feel about the surrogacy discourse

The Guardian spoke with surrogates across the US about what they think of the controversy surrounding the practice

Surrogacy has been thrust into the national spotlight in recent weeks, with both the announcement of Lena Dunham using a surrogate to start a family and the ongoing legal battle surrounding McKenna West, a gestational surrogate who fled to Texas to avoid having an abortion that was requested by the child’s biological parents.

With a renewed public interest on commercial, or compensated, surrogacy, the Guardian spoke with surrogates across the US who shared their experiences and how they feel about surrogacy being part of a global, public conversation.

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The Black women who choose to have children on their own: ‘We’re going in eyes open’

With growing support networks online and in person, these moms say they’re changing the narrative around Black single motherhood

When Chamise Alston was ready to have a child, she connected her computer to her TV and scrolled through profiles with her best friend, dismissing people who seemed like the wrong fit. Unlike the average millennial on a dating app, Alston was scanning a sperm bank catalogue for potential donors. The Maryland-based therapist hoped to conceive a child through the assisted reproductive technology in vitro-fertilization (IVF).

That winter day in 2023, Alston and her friend chose a donor who would help her become pregnant with her now 16-month-old daughter. As a Black woman, she felt empowered taking control of her reproductive destiny.

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