Over the weekend, protestors called for “free, safe, legal, on demand” abortions in Australia “in solidarity with US abortion rights protestors”.

Apple has released a range of new emojis in its latest update, including a ‘pregnant man’ and a ‘pregnant person’, reigniting the controversy that was sparked when the Unicode Consortium officially approved them in September 2021.

Do transwomen (i.e. biological males) have a right to become pregnant? This somewhat dystopic question continues to be explored, most recently in a Letter to the Editor published in peer reviewed journal Acta Biomedica. Its authors are two Italian academics from the Sapienza University of Rome, who say that the speed of scientific innovation requires us to address this question.

According to new research, Melbourne mothers were more likely to have a preterm stillbirth during lockdowns than they were in the previous two years.

Changes to surrogacy laws are the focus of a new review being conducted by New Zealand’s Law Commission, which is examining in particular what it refers to as the ‘legal confusion’ regarding legal parentage of babies born to surrogate mothers. Those advocating for a change in the law say that these babies can be left in “legal limbo” for the first few months of their lives because of the way the law currently operates.

A phenomenon we have covered before is the increasing pressure on women to consider freezing their eggs. It is advertised as a new solution to the ‘biological clock’ problem, the panic-inducing thought of women’s peak fertility window only lasting until around age 40. 

After more than a year of living through the Covid-19 outbreak, Australians have reluctantly become accustomed to some of the restrictions on their liberty imposed upon them in a collective effort to curb the outbreak of the virus and minimise illness and loss of life.

It has been a good week for care and compassion in Australia.

How many surrogate babies are too many?

The term “doula” may be unfamiliar to many people but the role itself is an ancient one. Traditionally, a doula would “provide emotional, physical and information support to women throughout their pregnancy, birth and the early postpartum.” Modern doulas are professionally trained to equip them for this work.