The women game designers fighting back on abortion rights

Through video games, live-action role-playing games and interactive documentaries, developers are challenging the conversation around reproductive rights

The year is 1972. You’re part of an underground network of feminists in Chicago that provide illegal (at the time) abortion services to vulnerable, pregnant people with few options. Despite the risk of imprisonment, and the ways that your personal experiences may not always perfectly align with your activism, you persist.

It’s emotionally complicated. It’s politically fraught. It’s a live-action roleplaying game by Jon Cole and Kelley Vanda called The Abortionists, which requires three players, one facilitator, six hours and a willingness to dig deep into the painful history of reproductive rights in the United States. That history has terrifying relevance in 2019, as numerous states pass laws that put their residents in a reality where abortion is functionally illegal. Based on the real-life work of a 1970s activist group called Jane, it challenges its participants to think about the “internal landscapes” of its players, and how they deal with the larger political and personal landscape of their world.

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Alabama pregnant woman shot in stomach is charged in fetus's death

Marshae Jones was charged with manslaughter, while the woman accused of shooting her walks free, report says

A pregnant woman from Alabama has been charged with manslaughter after she was shot in the stomach during an argument, killing the fetus.

Marshae Jones was reportedly five months pregnant when she was shot by another woman in December outside a shop in Pleasant Grove, near Birmingham.

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Air pollution 'may affect number of eggs ovaries can produce'

Results suggest environmental factors could play a role in female reproductive health

Air pollution has been linked to a drop in activity of a woman’s ovaries, researchers have revealed.

Experts say the findings suggest the female reproductive system is affected by environmental factors, although the study does not look specifically at the impact of air pollution on fertility.

Related: 'Artificial ovary' could help women conceive after chemotherapy

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Mari review – Georgia Parris' stirring drama about a pregnant dancer

Bobbi Jene Smith is excellent as a dancer attempting to reconcile motherhood, performance and family in this promising indie film

The latest triumph from Film London’s Microwave scheme – the BFI and BBC Film’s programme that has produced such worthwhile investments as Hong Khaou’s Lilting and Eran Creevy’s Shifty – is an engrossing close study of a thirtysomething woman caught between two worlds, and two states of being.

American choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith plays Charlotte, a principal in a contemporary dance troupe whose preparations for a major show are dealt two blows in quick succession. First comes a positive pregnancy test, and the realisation the body with which she so forcefully expresses herself will undergo radical change. Second, there’s a call from her family, gathering round the hospital bed of her dying grandmother. A rehearsal-room prologue has already established Charlotte’s remarkable physical flexibility; what follows is a test of mental and emotional adaptability.

Related: Three to tango: the pregnant dancer duetting with her husband

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from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2IThb2K

The Guardian view on parental rights: parliamentarians need them too | Editorial

A 21st-century parliament should not force any woman to choose between being a mother and an MP

Almost a third of parliamentarians in the House of Commons are women, an all-time high. This success is beginning to highlight the archaic working practices that prevent parliament from being representative of the nation it serves. In a brave and important article for these pages, the Labour MP Stella Creasy outlined her fight to get paid maternity cover for her work as a parliamentarian outside of the Commons. Ms Creasy has suffered repeated miscarriages. She now is pregnant again and says she can no longer keep her public and private lives separate. What she wants is maternity cover for MPs so that, in the autumn, her constituents in east London are not left without representation. This seems a reasonable request that ought not only to be granted to Ms Creasy but also afforded to all parliamentarians.

A woman should not to be forced to choose between being a mother and an MP. For too long Westminster has been run in otherworldly terms. The block to progress appears to be twofold. First, members of parliament are office-holders, not employees. Whereas many employees have line managers, MPs have 75,000 voters to answer to. MPs cannot seek recourse through employment law. They find themselves in a situation familiar to many self-employed people. However, MPs’ obligations are, unlike the self-employed, often largely out of their control. It is also the case that MPs’ hours are not normal working hours and their work is undertaken in the chamber and in their constituencies. Voters’ expectations are high: they demand well-researched replies to their emails and letters within hours, not days. They expect MPs to give up weekends and evenings to attend events and hold surgeries. A minority of MPs might fall short of these assumptions. But most do not.

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from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2XUEdfS

Three to tango: the pregnant dancer duetting with her husband

A screen role as an expectant dancer prepared Bobbi Jene Smith for the real thing. She talks about doing the bump … with a bump

It’s a case of life imitating art. In the new film Mari, Bobbi Jene Smith plays a dancer who discovers she’s pregnant just as she is choreographing her first big show. After the shoot, Smith became pregnant herself, and now must face some of the same challenges to her character.

When I Skype the dancer in her New York apartment, she looks suitably glowing in the laptop’s wan light. “I don’t feel like I’m glowing!” she says. “I’m pretty tired. I can tell my body’s telling me: slow down.”

'I made sure not to do anything to make the audience worry for me'

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from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://bit.ly/31yEfw9

I’m off to have a baby, and I’m taking no tips from the new pregnancy influencers | Hadley Freeman

Where once just not vomiting in my hair was enough, now I’m supposed to wonder how cute my bump looks in my lingerie selfies

By the time you read this I will be days away from having a baby taken out of my body – something that, even as I stare down the barrel of child number three, will never stop seeming extremely weird to me. So this is the last you’ll hear from me for a few months. Who will I rant to every week? Will the baby want to hear my thoughts on politics? If his or her first word is “Trump”, we’ll all know whose fault that is.

I’ve been pregnant a bunch of times now: once with twins, now with one baby, plus assorted miscarriages and an abortion along the way. And what I’ve learned from what I think of as my 360-degree experience of pregnancy is that it is a lot like flying economy on a long-haul flight. It is so all-consuming, exhausting and uncomfortable that you can’t actually believe it will ever be over. But then it is; you walk away and never think about it again, because the ultimate destination is a lot more interesting than the journey.

Related: Breast v bottle? Motherhood is messy enough without picking sides | Hadley Freeman

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from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2wWHwr8