Is it safe to have a child? Americans rethink family planning ahead of Trump’s return

Some in the US are reconsidering children, with fears over reproductive healthcare and the climate crisis front of mind

Chris Peterson wasn’t surprised that Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. But he was surprised by how quickly he and his wife started asking one another: should we try to have another baby before a possible nationwide abortion ban takes effect? Or should we give up on having a second child?

Peterson and his wife, who live in North Carolina, are thousands of dollars in debt because their first child needed to spend weeks in the hospital after being born prematurely. They had wanted to pay off that debt and wait a few years before having a second baby. But now, reproductive rights are again in the balance – Trump has said he would veto a nationwide abortion ban, but his allies are emboldened to push through more restrictions.

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IVF clinics brace for Christmas rush after sudden rebate change in NSW

‘Abrupt’ announcement will affect many women who have been planning their conception journeys to begin in early 2025, provider says

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IVF providers are bracing for an influx of patients scrambling to access fertility treatments over the Christmas break after the New South Wales government said it would cut a rebate for fertility treatments for many patients from February.

The $2,000 rebate, an Australian-first program, was available to all NSW women accessing fertility services for the first time to cover some out-of-pocket expenses. It was introduced in 2022 by the former Coalition government.

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Rise in number of pregnant women in England not getting help they need, survey finds

CQC study finds falls across a range of metrics dealing with antenatal care, labour, childbirth and postnatal care

More than a third of pregnant women in England do not always get help from maternity staff during labour or childbirth, the NHS care regulator has found.

Even more – almost half – do not always get help when they are in hospital after giving birth, a Care Quality Commission (CQC) survey of almost 19,000 women’s experiences of maternity care found.

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Number of single UK women having fertility treatment trebles, report says

Study also finds that number of female couples receiving IVF or DI treatment doubled between 2012 and 2022

The number of single women in the UK undergoing fertility treatment to start a family has more than trebled in a decade, a report has revealed.

In total, 4,800 women without a partner had in vitro fertilisation (IVF) or donor insemination (DI) treatment in 2022. This represents a 243% increase from the 1,400 single women who had fertility treatment in 2012, according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

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I’m still running at seven months pregnant. But it’s transformed how I think about exercise | Nell Frizzell

All too often, staying fit is about vanity and status. The slower and wheezier I become, the more I realise it’s also about survival

Have you recently seen a sweating woman with a watermelon stuffed up her fleece, wheezing her way behind a bush mere metres from a towpath to have a pee? If you have, please say hello next time – for that woman, I suspect, is me.

At seven months pregnant, I am still running three times a week. By “running”, I mean hurling my lumpen body through various woods, fields and city parks at a speed slower than walking, while wearing a pair of gently disintegrating trainers. Do I have to stop every 10 minutes to empty my bladder? You bet I do. Am I running half my usual distance in twice the usual time? Yes, ma’am.

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Epilepsy medication affected Sophie’s pregnancies. Should Australia adopt tougher guidelines?

Exclusive: FoI documents show Advisory Committee on Medicines considered tightening prescribing requirements for sodium valproate – but chose not to

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More than 100 pregnant women have been exposed to medication for epilepsy and bipolar disorder which carries a high risk of birth defects, as the government’s independent medical and scientific committee opted against recommending stricter prescribing rules for the drug.

Freedom of information (FoI) documents show the Advisory Committee on Medicines (ACM) met in April to consider changing the prescribing requirements for the drug, sodium valproate, after the UK introduced tougher regulations in January.

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Makeup, floss and hair dye use in pregnancy leads to more PFAS in breast milk – study

‘Forever chemicals’ pose health threat to developing children and linked with preterm birth, shorter lactation

Higher usage of personal care products among pregnant or nursing women leads to higher levels of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” in their blood and breast milk, new research shows, presenting a serious health threat to developing children.

The new study helps connect the dots among previous papers that have found concerning levels of PFAS in personal care products, umbilical cord blood, breast milk and shown health risks for developing children.

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How having babies became so political - video

The pronatalist movement in the US is gathering pace once again, rekindled by Silicon Valley personalities and hard-right conservatives who are becoming increasingly vocal about whether or not women are having enough babies. But it's not just in the US, some governments in other countries have launched marketing campaigns encouraging people to have more children, while others have offered financial incentives. But while many of these policies claim to be about halting population decline, there are other factors at play. Josh Toussaint-Strauss interrogates efforts around the world to boost birth rates, as well as the underlying political motivations, from bodily autonomy to immigration

• Birthrates are plummeting worldwide. Can governments turn the tide?

• When desperate measures to persuade women to have children fail, it’s time for fresh thinking

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Women who have lost a baby prefer the term ‘pregnancy loss’ over ‘miscarriage’

Exclusive: New research finds ‘clinical, cruel’ language used by medics is unacceptable to many

Women who have lost a baby often dislike the language used by medical professionals and would prefer the term “pregnancy loss” over “miscarriage”, research has found.

More than six in 10 women (61%) who had lost a baby between 18 and 23 weeks of pregnancy said it was unacceptable for doctors, midwives and nurses to use the word “miscarriage”.

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He has already fathered many children. Now Musk wants all of the US to embrace extreme breeding | Arwa Mahdawi

Trump’s billionaire best friend wants young people to ‘fear’ childlessness. He’ll be right at home in an incoming administration set on rolling back reproductive rights

Is Elon Musk the dinner party guest from hell? It sure seems that way. Not only is the man desperate for people to laugh at his crass jokes, he reportedly has a weird habit of trying to donate his sperm at every opportunity – including, according to an October New York Times report, an incident where he offered some spermatozoa, as casually as you might pass the salt, to a married couple “he had met socially only a handful of times” during a Silicon Valley dinner party.

Musk has denied offering sperm to strangers over supper. But it would be in keeping with his creepy breeding fetish: Musk is desperate for people in developed countries to have more children and has himself fathered at least 12 children with three women. (One of the children has since sadly died.) He’s become one of the most famous faces of a growing pro-natalist movement – one with an unsettling overlap with eugenics and deeply misogynistic ideas.

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He already has 12 children. Now Musk wants all of the US to embrace extreme breeding | Arwa Mahdawi

Trump’s billionaire best friend wants young people to ‘fear’ childlessness. He’ll be right at home in an incoming administration set on rolling back reproductive rights

Is Elon Musk the dinner party guest from hell? It sure seems that way. Not only is the man desperate for people to laugh at his crass jokes, he reportedly has a weird habit of trying to donate his sperm at every opportunity – including, according to an October New York Times report, an incident where he offered some spermatozoa, as casually as you might pass the salt, to a married couple “he had met socially only a handful of times” during a Silicon Valley dinner party.

Musk has denied offering sperm to strangers over supper. But it would be in keeping with his creepy breeding fetish: Musk is desperate for people in developed countries to have more children and has himself fathered at least 12 children with three women. He’s become one of the most famous faces of a growing pro-natalist movement – one with an unsettling overlap with eugenics and deeply misogynistic ideas.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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They were best mates. Then one had a baby, while the other struggled. Two brutally honest takes on what happens when motherhood affects friendship

They both had something the other wanted. Could their relationship survive?

The night I first met Lexy, I was supposed to be going on a date. I was 25 and had yet to really make friends since moving to London, so when she asked me for a drink I said yes. The Guardian tended to hire only one young reporter a year in those days, and Lexy was the fresh face for 2006 (I was 2004 – it had been a rather lonely first two years).

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Premature birth rates in US remain at historic high, report finds

Rate in 2023 remains at 10.4% due to chronic conditions, inadequate prenatal care and racial disparities

Premature birth rates in the US remain at a historic high, according to a new report.

On Thursday, March of Dimes, a maternal health nonprofit organization, released its latest findings which say that the national premature birth rate of 2023 remains at 10.4%, largely due to chronic conditions, inadequate prenatal care and racial disparities. In contrast, the premature birth rate 10 years ago was at 9.6%.

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Jessica has private health insurance – but she will have to drive 150km to the Gold Coast to have her baby delivered privately

Australian women increasingly facing limited choices as private hospitals close maternity wards, obstetricians and gynaecologists warn

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Despite paying for private health insurance for the last four years, Jessica* has no idea who will deliver her baby.

The first-time mother felt assured by the policy’s promise of continuity of care and comforted that the doctor who saw her at the beginning of her pregnancy would be there to deliver her baby when her January due date arrived.

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‘It was my first pregnancy so I didn’t know what was normal’ – This is climate breakdown

I’d been taking care of myself and the baby. Then the heat came. This is Mariama’s story

Location Burkina Faso

Disaster Heatwave, 2024

Mariama, not her real name, is a Burkinabé musician who lives in Ouagadougou. During the heatwaves earlier this year she went into early labour, and lost her baby.

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Ahlia says her GP ‘laughed in her face’ when she asked for a water birth – and that weight stigma in pregnancy has to stop

Australian researchers propose a new model to reduce ‘mum shaming’ over body size, which has negative health outcomes for mother and child

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When Ahlia* was waiting to check in for a routine pregnancy appointment, she says a receptionist walked by calling out directions to gestational diabetes education – then looked at her, waiting for Ahlia to follow.

“I’m not here for that,” Ahlia recalls saying in front of the waiting room full of people.

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When Trump says he’s going to ‘protect’ women, he means ‘control’ them | Arwa Mahdawi

Rights we have taken for granted can, as we saw with the overturning of Roe v Wade, be suddenly yanked away

“Hello, I’d like a line of credit, please.”

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