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

• US politics live – latest updates

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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Microplastics in placentas linked to premature births, study suggests

Tiny plastic pollution more than 50% higher in placentas from preterm births than in those from full-term births

A study has found microplastic and nanoplastic pollution to be significantly higher in placentas from premature births than in those from full-term births.

The levels were much higher than previously detected in blood, suggesting the tiny plastic particles were accumulating in the placenta. But the higher average levels found in the shorter pregnancies were a “big surprise” for the researchers, as longer terms could be expected to lead to more accumulation.

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I am a midwife in a NSW hospital. This is what an ordinary day looks like | Oceane Campbell

I can give women life-saving medications and resuscitate babies, yet we are still the lowest paid of our profession in the country

It’s the start of my shift as a midwife in a New South Wales hospital. I feel like I am doing a lot for my $45 per hour. I am caring for a woman in the throes of labour. Her eyes are glassy, her vocalisations frantic. She is in transition, a time in labour you can feel terrified and out of control. I hold her and ground her with my well-practised voice, refined from more than 10 years of experience.

I set up a baby Resuscitaire in case it is needed. I document heart rates and clean up body fluids while also educating a student working with me. We write down vital signs and draw up drugs ready to administer. Do you know that midwives can initiate dosages of morphine, antibiotics and other drugs without having to bother a doctor?

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Katie Price: Making Babies review – truly repugnant television

This documentary about Price and her partner’s attempt to have a child may have spawned acres of coverage, but there is no delving into the agonies of infertility, which makes it depthless, thoughtless and downright offensive

The relentless belligerence of Katie Price is one of the wonders of the modern world. She could start a fight in an empty house. It’s fascinating.

In Katie Price: Making Babies, her ire is directed at her fiance Carl (“I love Kate. She gives me a headache. A migraine. But I’m still here.”), the ravages of time, the female reproductive system and the idea of being thwarted by the accumulated evidence, in the form of scans, blood tests and samples taken by her doctors, that the general laws of a 45-year-old (at the time of filming) woman’s biology apply to her too.

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UK women who suffer miscarriage should get two weeks’ paid leave, MPs say

Government urged to introduce universal right of bereavement leave as ‘time to grieve’ early pregnancy loss

Women who suffer a miscarriage should get two weeks of paid leave from work so they can mourn the loss of their baby, an influential group of MPs has said today.

The government is under mounting pressure to introduce a new right of bereavement leave for women across the UK who lose their baby before 24 weeks’ gestation. That happens 250,000 times every year.

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