Europe | U.K. | Health

Advent of the virgin births: Women who have never been in a relationship paying £5,000 to get pregnant

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Dozens of young heterosexual women have had virgin births after undergoing IVF in Britain, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. Some are using the £5,000 fertility treatment to bypass the need to involve a man, and others so that they can save themselves for a ‘special relationship’. Doctors said last night at least 25 straight women had given birth in the past five years despite being virgins. But campaigners for the traditional family said the ‘distorted’ move turned babies into little more than ‘teddy bears’ to be ‘picked off the shelf’. Religious groups said it undermined the
International | Science

Science Is Still Trying To Figure Out What Makes A Female Athlete

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In 2013, professional sprinter Dutee Chand was banned from competing as a female athlete. She wasn't accused of doping, and she wasn't accused of not being a woman—she was born and raised as a girl. Instead, her hormones were at fault. Chand's natural testosterone levels fall into a male range, and according to international regulations, she can't compete again until her testosterone lowers to a more ladylike level—a process that would require drugs or surgery. Chand refuses, and in March she challenged the ban. Switzerland's Court of Arbitration for Sport is expected to come out with a
Europe | Great Britain | History

Early men and women had gender equality, say anthropologists

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A study has shown that in contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes men and women tend to hold equal standing and influence, suggesting that sexual equality was the norm for humans throughout most of our evolutionary history. Mark Dyble, the leading anthropologist on the study at University College London, said: “There is still this wider perception that hunter-gatherers are more macho or male-dominated. We’d argue it was only with the emergence of agriculture, when people could start to accumulate resources, that inequality emerged.”
Europe | Germany | Health

German woman pregnant with quadruplets – at 65: reports

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A 65-year-old Berlin woman who already has 13 children is pregnant again with quadruplets, German media reported Sunday. The Russian and English teacher's pregnancy follows several attempts abroad at artificial insemination over the last year and a half, German RTL broadcaster said. The woman, Annegret Raunigk, decided to try to have another child because her youngest daughter, who is nine, wanted a little brother or sister, RTL said on its website. The TV channel will broadcast an interview with the expectant mother, who has seven grandchildren, on Monday evening.
Asia | Japan | Culture

Japanese City Will Pay for Women to Freeze Their Eggs

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Late last month, the city of Urayasu, in Japan’s Chiba Prefecture, decided to one-up the nation’s public medical insurance scheme by offering to subsidize egg freezing for local women. Dubbed the Urayasu Oocyte Cryopreservation Program, the plan is an apparent global first by any municipality. The local government has promised to allocate 90 million yen (about $750,000) to the local Juntendo University Hospital to promote research on the process, which involves encouraging local women to utilize the procedure. Normally, including 10 years of storage, egg freezing costs about a million yen