NEWSWORTHY
Pregnant, desperate and poor, Pakistani mother Zameena faced a stark choice: Risk her life by having a secret abortion, or risk her life bearing her husband a sixth child. In the end, she opted for the former, one of more than 2 million women a ...
U.S. Supreme Court blocks restrictive Louisiana abortion law while litigation continues
A divided U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday stopped a Louisiana law imposing strict regulations on abortion clinics from going into effect in its first major test on abortion since the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy last summer. The court on a 5-4 vote granted an ...
In federal crackdown, U.S. charges 20 in Chinese birth tourism business
Dongyuan Li's business was called You Win USA, and authorities say she coached pregnant Chinese women on how to get into the United States to deliver babies who would automatically enjoy all the benefits of American citizenship. Over two years, the now-41-year-old raked in millions ...
Concerned by high cost of raising children, many South Koreans opt to dote on pets
Kang Sung-il buys Sancho, his Pomeranian, a toy every business trip and will dress it up in a new $50 suit when he visits his mother this Lunar New Year holiday. Kang and his wife say children are too expensive and bring too much pressure. ...
China's population shrinks for first time in 70 years despite two-child policy: experts
China's population shrank last year for the first time in 70 years, experts said, warning of a "demographic crisis" that puts pressure on the country's slowing economy. For decades the world's most populous nation, with about 1.4 billion citizens, China limited most families to one ...
With plan to show women more respect, South Korea tries to fix its demographic crisis
In just over a decade, South Korea has spent the equivalent of a small European economy trying to fix its demographic crisis, yet birthrates have dropped to the lowest in the world. This year, President Moon Jae-in, who describes himself as a feminist president, is ...
91 nations can't sustain population levels, study finds; birthrates soaring in developing countries
Soaring birthrates in developing nations are fueling a global baby boom but women in dozens of richer countries aren't producing enough children to maintain population levels there, according to figures released Friday. A global overview of birth, death and disease rates evaluating thousands of data ...
Women's birth canals in Africa, Asia, America have different dimensions: study
The size and shape of women's birth canals vary depending on what part of the world they live in, but most medical textbooks are based on a European body type, scientists said Wednesday, warning of health risks. Differences in the depth and width of the ...
In sign of further easing of childbirth controls, China shuts family planning offices
China's health commission is getting rid of three offices that were previously dedicated to family planning, it announced late on Sunday, the latest signal that Beijing may further reduce restrictions on childbirth to combat an aging population. State-media has hinted in recent weeks that China, ...
China's moves to combat an aging population by relaxing decades-old curbs on family size have hit an unexpected snag: Many parents are no longer interested in having more babies. The government has indicated it will scrap its policy which limits the number of children per ...
Unsuccessful with IVF, Japanese actress Jun Sena's quest for a child succeeds via adoption
Like the Japanese proverb "fall seven times and stand up eight," Jun Sena made seven failed attempts to conceive through in vitro fertilization before she turned the odds of having a child in her favor. No, she was not able to get pregnant. But she ...
In Northern Ireland, abortion rights groups clamor for change
Abortion rights activists in Northern Ireland called on the British government to end what one group described as the province's "Victorian-era abortion ban" after neighboring Ireland voted by a landslide to liberalize its laws. Official results showed on Saturday that 66 percent of voters in ...
