Rise in NHS birth centre closures ‘shocking’ denial of women’s rights, experts say

Twelve midwife-led maternity units have closed in England since 2019 with six closing since Labour came to power in 2024

NHS officials are shutting growing numbers of birth centres in a “shocking” denial of a woman’s right to have a midwife rather than a doctor oversee their baby’s birth, say campaigners.

Twelve birth centres – midwife-led maternity units – have closed in England since 2019. Birth centres play a key role in ensuring that women can choose whether to have their baby at a unit in a hospital run by doctors, at one where midwives are in charge, or at home.

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New ‘high safety’ chemicals in plastic food packaging linked to lower birth weight, study finds

Dinch, an allegedly ‘safe’ alternative, used in the EU and US also found to cause fetal development complications

Exposure to a new generation of allegedly “safe” plasticizers is linked to lower birth weight and fetal development complications, which could cause serious health problems later in life, a new peer-reviewed study found.

As the health risks in exposure to common phthalate plasticizers became clear over the last few decades, industry began switching to a new type of chemical, called Dinch, that it claimed was a “high safety”, nontoxic alternative. It is widely used in soft plastic food packaging in the United States and European Union, and is found in children’s toys, medical devices, some textiles, flooring and other consumer goods.

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‘I can’t believe I get to see that’: One Born Every Minute is back for a 12th series

Reality TV show returns to focus on childbirth, diversity and the sharing of stories in a social media age

[PIX HERE: https://media.gutools.co.uk/search?query=One%20Born%20Every%20Minute&since=2026-10-19T23:00:00.000Z]

When One Born Every Minute first aired in 2010, viewers loved its fly-on-the-wall take on life in a maternity unit, from midwives idly chatting about unusual pregnancy cravings to parents squabbling over whether to call their child Zeus.

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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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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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Spermageddon, ‘greedy jobs’ and abject fear: why birth rates are plummeting – and why it matters

The author of Generation Maybe, Camilla Cavendish, explains the many reasons people are having fewer children, from dating apps to unaffordable housing and the climate crisis

Generation Maybe is the most tactful possible title for Camilla Cavendish’s bracing new book – because the trend she’s describing is anything but a “maybe”. “The wave of childlessness that is sweeping the globe is extraordinary,” she writes. It’s in the UK, where the fertility rate hit 1.39 children per woman in 2025, the lowest on record. It’s across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, visible in so many measures – nearly half of Canadian women surveyed in their 40s said they’d had fewer children than they would have liked. But it’s also a global story. “The UAE, Chile and Tamil Nadu in India have even lower birthrates than Germany,” Cavendish writes. “China is growing old before it gets rich, and Russia has maintained its population size purely by annexing Crimea and parts of Ukraine.” In fact, when it comes to falling populations, “only the Black Death in the 14th century is comparable to what is happening now”.

When I meet her in central London, Cavendish is tailored, self-possessed, you might even say poised, but very open – she never gives an opinion without asking yours, she talks very freely about her family and she is upfront about what she sees as her faults. Now 58, she started her career at McKinsey, the mega-management consultancy, having done PPE at Oxford at the same time as David Cameron, for whom she worked as policy director when he was in government and to whom she remains intensely loyal (every time his name comes up, we have a fight).

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The girl with a will to live: the love, hope and pain of raising Elsie – my one in 163 million daughter

She was born with an ultra-rare genetic disorder. After my decades working in film PR, I now face the biggest campaign of all: the fight for her life

My daughter Elsie has beautiful curls – blond like a little Botticelli cherub’s, hair that someone dark like me could only ever dream of. She laughs a lot, has a cheeky sense of humour and soaks in all the sounds around her – rustling leaves, the sea, a dog barking, children playing around a pool, me impersonating the alarm clock every morning, me impersonating monkeys. Indeed, me impersonating any animal.

Sound is important for Elsie because she has a visual impairment and, while we know she has some peripheral vision, is legally classed as blind. As a result, she uses her tongue to check her environment. When she’s excited it sticks out, tasting the air around her, licking anyone close, sensing space. And when she likes the taste of something she keeps her tongue out until you give her more. This is how we know she likes lollies.

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Customers of UK-owned surrogacy firm in Mexico allegedly face huge bills after insurance denied

UK government reviewing allegations about My Surrogacy Journey after complaints about medical costs

The UK government has said it is reviewing allegations about a British-owned surrogacy service after surrogates in Mexico who faced health complications including a hysterectomy had their insurance claims rejected.

The Department of Health and Social Care is considering whether the UK-based provider My Surrogacy Journey should remain listed on gov.uk as one of four domestic surrogacy agencies available to intended parents, after its Mexican sister company received complaints.

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Babies born to anaemic mothers have smaller brains, study finds

Key regions of the brain linked to movement, learning and emotions were affected and may lead to cognitive problems

Babies born to mothers with anaemia have smaller brains, particularly in key regions linked to movement, learning and the regulation of emotion, according to a study.

Researchers said the differences, first detected at the age of one, could lead to cognitive problems when children started school.

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‘Grief becomes a routine’: Farhana lost five babies. A ‘culture of silence’ exacerbated her pain

A first-of-its-kind study shows the prevalence of miscarriage in Australia but experts fear multicultural groups remain underrepresented

On a quiet street in western Sydney, Farhana Laffernis races her curious English staffy and boisterous three-year-old daughter in the front door.

Inside, her three-year-old wears a pink tutu and excitedly babbles as she cuddles her toy doll. The family life Laffernis has built did not come easy.

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