Thursday briefing: The crisis putting maternity units in England at risk of closure

In today’s newsletter: rising rates of C-sections, staff shortages and years of unresolved concerns are preventing some hospitals from delivering babies safely

Good morning. Over the summer, doctors in the emergency department at the North Devon district hospital in Barnstaple, one of the most remote in the UK, received a crash course on delivering a baby. Their training covered subjects nobody wants to hear about when they’re imminently expecting: shoulder dystocia, postpartum haemorrhage, and neonatal collapse. “I’m hoping that we won’t see such emergencies,” one doctor said. “It’s been an intense time.”

That crash course was necessary because maternity services at the hospital have been indefinitely suspended due to staff shortages. Other remote hospitals across the country are expected to do the same, as NHS trusts struggle to recruit enough staff to safely deliver babies. Earlier this week, the Guardian reported that up to 20 maternity units in England could shut. The story sheds light on a maternity care crisis that has been rumbling on for years, and shows how childbirth has changed dramatically over the last decade.

Oil | Miatta Fahnbulleh is leaning towards rejecting the giant Rosebank oilfield, the Guardian understands, in what would be a blow for the North Sea energy industry and a major victory for climate campaigners.

Reform UK | Farage’s party has been fined more than £2,000 for failing to declare it was the publisher of campaign material seen by voters – including an additional penalty for failing to pay on time.

Defence | Britain risks failing to deter future Russian aggression in the high north beyond the UK because of shortfalls in the number and availability of Royal Navy submarines and warships, MPs on the defence select committee have said.

Technology| Websites around the globe have gone dark after a serious vulnerability was found in a computer language used to build much of the world wide web.

Israel | The Washington Post photojournalist who was attacked and seriously injured by Israeli settlers in the West Bank on Friday has described how she was saved with the help of local Palestinians.

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Maternity care in the UK is in a doom loop – how has it come to this? | Zoe Williams

Twenty years ago, if a pregnant woman had asked for a C-section because of her fears over poor staffing levels, midwives would have thought she was over-anxious. Now, it seems like a depressingly realist position

The classic way to outrage someone who’s pregnant is to touch their stomach without asking. I would never do that and it never, back in the day, happened to me – but I always thought, as outrageous as it might hypothetically be, that it also stood as a vivid analogy for the generalised social intrusiveness you get while you’re visibly pregnant. Endless questions about how you’re feeling, when you’re due, what hospital you’re going to, whether it’s a boy or a girl, how much time you have off. I hated this interrogation 20 years ago, but now I do it on a reflex; some driving force of human fellowship makes me want to know. I realised mid-sentence, asking a stranger about hospitals – and replying “That’s a great hospital, my sister had her kids in there” – that it must be even more grating than it was in the 00s. My nieces are 19 and 21 now, and that great hospital, unless it’s magically unconnected to the rest of the NHS, has probably changed quite a lot.

The NHS Alliance has announced that up to 20 of the country’s 155 smaller, consultant-led maternity units, mostly in rural or coastal areas, might have to close, since their safety is in question. The problem – which will seem very pressing and obvious to anyone about to give birth, yet quite abstract and manageable to anyone who isn’t – is that those areas aren’t teeming with alternatives. There are women in Devon whose maternity hospital has been temporarily closed, whose next nearest hospital is 53 miles away. Do they even encourage people to write a birthing plan any more? Because nobody’s, surely, would start: “First, I’d like to spend 90 minutes in a car, yelling at my birthing partner.”

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Pregnant women face workplace hostility and ‘sham redundancies’, Australian human rights report finds

Sex discrimination commissioner says too often ‘it’s the woman who has the burden of bringing a complaint’ in parental discrimination cases

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Women are being forced out of employment through “sham redundancies”, losing shifts and facing hostile work environments after having a baby, according to a report by the Australian Human Rights Commission, which warns parental discrimination remains a major barrier to gender equality.

The commission’s report suggests pregnancy discrimination is more prominent for vulnerable groups, including immigrant and First Nations women, people with disability and LGBTQ+ people. The commission held roundtables with dozens of parents, legal and community advocates when compiling the report.

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Up to 20 maternity units in England may have to shut, NHS leader warns

Exclusive: NHS Alliance’s acute care director says centralisation of services ‘inevitable’ to ensure safe care

• Why are some NHS maternity units facing closure?

Up to 20 maternity units in England will have to shut to ensure mothers and babies receive safe care amid shortages of doctors and rising caesarean section rates, an NHS leader has warned.

Matthew Hopkins, the NHS Alliance’s director for acute care, said centralising childbirth services into fewer hospitals was “inevitable” and the “right thing”, but would lead to a political backlash against unpopular changes.

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UK government apologises for past burials of stillborn babies in mass graves

Yvette Cooper acknowledges ‘unthinkable pain’ caused by practice between 1930s and 1980s after campaign by Wirral woman and others

The health secretary, Yvette Cooper, has issued a “profound apology” for the “unthinkable pain” caused to parents whose stillborn babies were buried in mass graves.

Parents spent decades not knowing where their babies were buried, owing to a practice in which stillborn babies were taken from mothers at hospital and buried in communal graves.

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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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