coochie queens

A senior midwife sutures a woman who has just given birth in Borno State, Nigeria. Around the world, postpartum bleeding is a serious issue, leading to 43,000 deaths a year. A new series of reports proposes ways to prevent and to treat it.Lynsey Addario/Getty Images

June 12, 20263:05 PM ET

By Ari Daniel, Joseph Kim

"I was running around hospitals trying to get blood. By the time I got back she was gone."

Dr. Olufemi Oladapo is haunted by the memory of the excited mother-to-be whom he couldn't save in Nigeria in his early career. After waiting six years to become pregnant, she died of postpartum hemorrhage. That's the leading cause of maternal death, responsible for 43,000 deaths a year.

To fight this tragedy, Dr. Oladapo, who's now a physician with the World Health Organization's Special Programme on human reproduction, co-authored a sweeping three-part series published today in the Lancet. characterizing the crisis and laying out how to solve it.

The condition impacts some 27 million women each year. Some bleeding is normal after childbirth. But excessive bleeding — a postpartum hemorrhage — is incredibly dangerous.

"It can become a medical emergency very quickly," says Adam Devall, a professor of maternal health at the University of Oxford. A woman who has had an otherwise uncomplicated labor can deteriorate within minutes if the bleeding is not recognized and treated promptly.

And the women themselves are aware of how severe it is.

"Typically, the women say, 'I feel like I'm dying.' They actually sense it when they are bleeding too much," says Ioannis Gallos, who's with the World Health Organization's Maternal and Perinatal Health Unit. "If no one was to act on it, within 10 to 20 minutes, easily a woman can die."

That's why postpartum hemorrhage is considered, in Devall's words, "a race against time."

Calling the series a comprehensive compilation of all the evidence, former Jhpiego Chief Medical Officer Dr. Harshad Sanghvi praised the authors for "this tremendous effort" and considers the series "a significant call to action." Jhpiego is a nonprofit organization with a focus on women's and children's health.

Starting with a special drape

To treat these bleeds promptly, say the co-authors, it's essential to measure the blood loss rather than merely eyeballing it — which can miss the hemorrhages about half the time. Devall says a simple plastic drape placed beneath the woman can work wonders.

"The blood then collects into this specially designed drape, which has calibrated lines on it," says Devall. "These lines allow midwives and doctors to easily see the amount of blood loss after the birth."

There are multiple interventions: uterine massage to encourage contractions, medication, IV fluids.

The researchers conducted a massive trial across Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa involving more than 200,000 women. They tested this approach — of early detection with a drape, clear criteria for treatment and the subsequent set of simultaneous interventions … and the results were unmistakable.

"We saw a massive decrease in severe bleeding," says Devall.

The study also points up a tremendous difference between survival rates in wealthy and lower resource countries.

"The rate of postpartum hemorrhage is not any different between high-income countries and low-income countries," says Oladapo. "What is different is what is given when these conditions are identified."

The report finds the mortality rate from postpartum hemorrhage can be more than 200 times less in well-resourced countries like the United States compared to under-resourced countries such as Afghanistan, Vietnam or Nigeria, where Oladapo treated that patient years ago.

The drug oxytocin can stem the bleeding but it does require refrigeration – a challenge in lower resource countries.

The report also calls for pit-crew-like simulation-based training for the whole care team.

The research team says the goal now is to get medical professionals and health workers to adopt their recommendations.

It's an idea that appeals to Doreen Kainyu Kaura. She's a professor of midwifery at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa who wasn't involved in the research effort. She says the conclusions align with what she's experienced in the delivery room.

"It will be a fantastic approach to ensure that we have these lifesaving interventions that reach women at the right place, at the right time," says Kaura.

"Women should not be dying from PPH [postpartum hemorrhage] in this day and age, given what we know," says Oladapo. "If we use what we have now, we will reduce more than 95% of the deaths."

And the economics favors interventions: "Postpartum hemorrhage as it is now is costing us more money than what we would have used to prevent it."

"If you invest even 5% of the cost of postpartum hemorrhage in preventing it," Dr. Oladapo concludes, "you're going to not just save lives but also save money."

Council of Europe Strasbourg 11 June 2026

Women are being pushed from online spaces, harming democracy

The Council of Europe has launched a new recommendation aimed at strengthening accountability for technology-facilitated violence against women and girls, a rapidly growing form of abuse that increasingly threatens women's safety, dignity and participation in public life.

Technology-facilitated violence includes cyberstalking, online harassment, the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, privacy violations, misogynistic hate campaigns, threats and image manipulation. Such abuse often accompanies other forms of violence, including domestic violence, allowing perpetrators to extend surveillance, coercion and control through digital tools.

Europe comes together against online violence against women and girls

Many representatives of the Council of Europe’s 46 member countries attended the 10 June launch, which was held online and at the Council of Europe’s headquarters in Strasbourg.  Featured speakers at the event praised the recommendation, adopted by the Committee of Ministers in March, for providing guidance to European countries on preventing and combating violence committed, assisted, aggravated or amplified through digital technologies. It also sets out measures to ensure that perpetrators, facilitators and, where appropriate, technology companies are held accountable.

Catherine Van De Heyning, Professor of European fundamental rights law at the University of Antwerp and Deputy Public Prosecutor in Antwerp's cybercrime division, described the recommendation as “a major step forward in ensuring that justice systems are equipped to respond effectively to technology-facilitated violence against women and girls.”

She highlighted emerging forms of abuse driven not only by misogyny or harassment, but also by financial gain, citing a recent case in which Belgian authorities arrested a Dutch national accused of operating Telegram groups that distributed and sold intimate images and personal information of women without their consent.

Online violence harming women in public life

The recommendation warns that technology-facilitated violence can lead to anxiety, depression, reputational harm, economic loss and withdrawal from online spaces. It also notes that women in public life are particularly affected, including journalists, politicians, human-rights defenders and women’s rights activists, who are frequently targeted by coordinated online attacks intended to intimidate or silence them.

To address these challenges, the recommendation calls for stronger laws and policies, effective investigations and access to justice, improved support services for victims, enhanced international cooperation and greater responsibility for technology companies and online platforms. It also promotes prevention through education, digital literacy and awareness-raising.

Also participating in the launch, María Rún Bjarnadóttir, head of legal at the Office of the national commissioner of the Icelandic police and a member of the Council of Europe’s GREVIO monitoring body (which deals with violence against women) stressed the need to strengthen law-enforcement capacity and to keep pace with rapidly evolving technologies such as digital forensic expertise.

The recommendation forms part of the Council of Europe's broader efforts to ensure that women and girls can participate fully, equally and safely in the digital environment and that technological innovation advances human rights rather than undermining them.

By Diego Bonomo, Jadzia Pierce, Gustavo Akkerman & Anna Sophia Oberschelp de Meneses on June 11, 2026

Posted in International, Uncategorized

On 20 May 2026, Brazil adopted Presidential Decree No. 12,976, establishing a comprehensive framework to address violence against women online. Adopted alongside a parallel decree (No. 12,975) reforming intermediary liability, it reflects a more assertive approach to regulating online harms, including those driven or amplified by AI. Together, these measures will require companies to reassess internal processes to ensure rapid content removal and more proactive monitoring, including for AI‑enabled services.

While framed as a gender‑based violence measure, the Decree reflects a broader shift in regulatory expectations from reactive moderation to proactive platform duties and systemic accountability. It also forms part of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration’s broader efforts, ongoing since 2023, to regulate social media in the absence of comprehensive legislation. This approach has already triggered constitutional and policy debate, including regarding the use of presidential decrees to impose substantive obligations and potential implications for freedom of expression.

A broad, technology‑aware definition of digital violence

A key feature of the Decree is its expansive definition of “violence against women in the digital environment.” It goes beyond traditional offences such as harassment or threats to include conduct causing physical, psychological, political or economic harm, including where amplified by digital technologies.

The Decree expressly covers AI‑generated or manipulated content, such as synthetic intimate images and AI‑enabled harassment. This effectively integrates AI‑related harms into mainstream online safety rules rather than treating them separately. The framework is grounded in principles such as victim protection, privacy, and the prohibition of re‑victimisation.

From notice-and-action to structured platform duties

The Decree introduces a more structured regime for platforms hosting user‑generated content. In particular, platforms must:

provide accessible reporting channels;

assess and respond to notifications promptly;

communicate decisions and reasoning to both notifier and user; and

direct users to appropriate support services.

Platforms may retain content where there is reasonable doubt as to its illegality, provided the decision is justified and communicated, preserving proportionality and procedural fairness.

These obligations should be read in light of a 2025 Brazilian Supreme Court decision that significantly limited the traditional “safe harbor” under Article 19 of the Marco Civil da Internet. Under that regime, platforms were generally only liable for third‑party content if they failed to comply with a court‑ordered takedown. The Court’s decision departs from this approach, indicating that platforms may be required to remove unlawful content directly, including upon user notice, without prior judicial intervention, and introducing a broader “duty of care” (dever de cuidado). While not expressly codified, the Decree clearly reflects and operationalizes this shift by embedding more structured notice-handling accountability requirements.

Shen Shen runs a feminist bookstore in Chengdu, China. She must tread carefully to avoid being seen as stoking ‘gender antagonism’. Composite: Victoria Hart/Guardian Design

Amy Hawkins in ChengduTue 9 Jun 2026

In a small, unassuming bookstore in south-west China, a discreet community of women dream of a more equal future. Here in Chengdu, 42-year-old Shen Shen runs one of the country’s leading feminist bookstores.

“The world doesn’t lack bookstores for men,” she says, surrounded by piles of volumes by authors including Judith Butler, Simone de Beauvoir and Chizuko Ueno.

But Shen Shen must tread carefully. Although “feminist” is not quite a dirty word in China, “gender antagonism” – behaviour or speech could be seen as stoking division between men and women – is.

Being a woman in China is getting harder. The rising tide of a booming economy once lifted up people from all parts of society, revolutionising lives – women’s included. Now, an economic slowdown and Chinese leadership that promotes a return to traditional family values are testing female liberation

Laishuxia bookstore. Photograph: Ding Gang/The Guardian

Women today are more educated than ever before, yet less likely to be in the workforce. The female labour participation rate has fallen by more than 20% since 1990, as state-sponsored childcare has closed down and caring responsibilities for an ageing population have grown.

At the same time, authorities have become increasingly alarmed by women who shun traditional gender roles – whether that is by refusing to get married or by speaking out against sexism. Feminist social media accounts are regularly shut down by China’s internet censors because of complaints they have incited “gender antagonism”.

In a four-part series, the Guardian is analysing the changing status of women across Chinese society. The series examines how in different aspects of their lives they are responding to government restrictions and shifting social and economic conditions. Some are turning to overt activism to champion women’s rights, despite such behaviour being all but banned by the authorities. Others are resisting pressure to marry and have children, or forging careers outside traditional boundaries.

In the face of an increasingly restrictive political atmosphere, Chinese women are charting their own paths, defying societal pressure to live according to a fixed, Communist party-approved blueprint.

In Chengdu, a city far from the more stifling atmosphere of Beijing, a cautious feminist revival is unfolding. The city is known for its more relaxed social attitudes, and Shen Shen’s bookstore, Laishuxia, is one of a number of female-focused communities that are growing in popularity.

“The bookstore I want to create is one that takes root,” Shen Shen says.

Chengdu: China’s most feminist city?

Women are at risk of "exploitation by predatory donors", the UK's fertility regulator warns

Women desperate to become parents are being harassed for sex and offered cheap, illegal sperm samples online.

Some of those unable to access fertility treatment are seeking out options on social media sites, which is driving a growing unregulated market – with some even turning to "Tinder for sperm" websites.

A BBC Wales investigation paid £100 for a next-day delivery sample from a man who advertised his "baby batter" online and sent it in a box with a frozen carton of tomato passata.

The UK's regulator for fertility warned women were at risk of "exploitation by predatory donors".

As part of the investigation, I set out to see how easy it would be to source sperm online - and there was no shortage of men offering their services.

One online advert tells me I can "rely" on a man called Joe Donor for a delivery in the post.

He's a prolific donor who claims to have 180 children around the world conceived through sex and artificial insemination.

In a rare move, he was named publicly as Robert Albon by a family court judge after a case in Cardiff, to warn of the dangers of unregulated sperm donation.

We contacted him using an alias, and it only took a couple of emails and a short phone call to arrange a next day delivery from him. He didn't ask us to verify who we were or offer any health checks for us to look at.

He charged us £100 in cash, sent via post, for a syringe of sperm which came chilled by a box of tomato passata acting as an ice block.

A licenced clinic checked the sample four hours after we received it and said all sperm cells were dead.

Albon questioned how we had stored and transported it. He said enough sperm for fertilisation usually did survive his delivery process and he had "many successful pregnancies" this way.

Albon and hundreds of other men have used Facebook to connect with women looking for sperm - some groups have up to 40,000 members.

I joined a donor group with a blank profile and, while I had some messages that seemed genuine, many offered sex or suggested costs for samples, asked for intimate images and persistently messaged to try and make arrangements.

Joe Donor isn't shy about being a donor and has given lots of interviews about it, including with The Sun's Fabulous magazine

Some of the men continually pushed for sex and tried to persuade me that it would be the cheapest and most effective option.

I saw one woman warning she had received a donation from a man in north Wales who she then found out was a convicted sex offender.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) defined unregulated donation as a donation occurring outside of an HFEA-licensed premises, adding it was a criminal offence in the UK.

Tianna and her wife Nikki, from south Wales, turned to unregulated donation. They said they were not eligible for NHS funding, and felt private treatment was too expensive.

"I always knew I wanted to be a mum, we knew that there was something missing from our family," Tianna said.

She added she was aware of the risks and wary of any pressure from potential donors.

"You do get weirdos who are in it for the complete wrong reasons," she said.

"There's a website, it's kind of like a mixture between a catalogue and Tinder, you can filter eye color, hair color, so you can look for exactly what it is you're looking for."

The couple were looking for artificial insemination but said men often recommended sex as the best option.

"I think it was really helpful that me and my wife had each other so there was no way that anyone could really pressure us into doing something we didn't want to do, because when all you want to have is a baby you're in a really vulnerable position."

Tianna and Nikki finally found a donor they felt safe with on a co-parenting website and created a contract so that all parties were aware of their plans for contact and parental rights.

But this is not a legal contract.

"There is still a chance that in the future, he could come and try and start claiming parental rights and take us through a court case," admitted Tianna.

"But I do think we've put as much as possible in place to stop that happening and I genuinely do believe that he is never going to do that to us."

They now have a one-year-old son.

"We wanted him for so long. Obviously, we took a risk. But it was so worth it."

Tianna, from south Wales, says when you desperately want a baby, you're in "a really vulnerable position"

Unregulated donors offer services in different ways, from those that have sex for free, to those charging expenses to fly across the world for an artificial insemination.

Daniel Bayen, 25, is based in the US but travelled to the UK in the summer of 2025 to donate via artificial insemination - a trip he says resulted in four babies.

The BBC spent three days filming with Dan, who claims in online videos to be both the "highest paid donor" and to work "not for profit".

"Recipients have to help me cover all my health and my living expenses too, not just the travel," he said.

"There is also communication, health, posting on Instagram, putting information out there, education."

He said he only asked clients in the UK to covers travel costs, but elsewhere claimed to have been offered up to 20,000 US dollars for a donation.

When the BBC challenged him on taking advantage of people who may have money to spend, he added: "I don't really care what other people think. I care what's best for the children and the families I work with."

Dan calls himself an open donor and is happy for children to know his identity. He also posts videos about his lifestyle and health test results. But he is not open about everything.

"In order to protect yourself as a donor, you don't want too many assets under your name, just to make sure that no one can destroy your life and your family if they wanted to," he said.

"I think you, of course, shouldn't lie about your health and your SDI screenings. But the one thing that is OK to not give too much information out about is where you work, what you do, the information for recipients to sue you. Which could be, for example, your full name or your address."

Dan claimed he had not broken the law while donating in the UK.

Daniel Bayen says he's both the "highest paid donor" but also works on a "not for profit" basis

Licenced clinics in the UK are regulated by the HFEA, which has created a page on their website where people can familiarise themselves with the law.

The HFEA said it had referred several prolific unregulated donors to the police.

"It's important to know that using an unregulated donor is not a criminal offence, and you are not breaking the law, but the donors or other people involved in the process of making the sperm available may be committing a serious crime," it said.

According to the HFE Act, "using, storing, procuring, testing, processing, and distributing gametes" (eggs or sperm), to be used by humans, are all illegal unless they are carried out by a HFEA licensed clinic.

Clare Ettinghausen, director of strategy and corporate affairs at HFEA, said the sperm delivery we received from Albon was "shocking".

"The law's quite clear that without a license from the HFEA, you can't process sperm, you can't distribute sperm, which is what he's doing by sending it."

In response, Albon said the regulations did not apply to him because he understood giving private donations, including charging for them, was legal.

He also said he was not a "direct risk" to any vulnerable woman.

Ettinghausen said social media firm Meta, which owns Facebook, was "facilitating the law being broken" - a point she raised at a UK Parliament select committee in March.

The HFEA said it had also contacted Meta directly about this, but Ettinghausen added she remained "realistic" that complete closure of these types of social media groups would just move the practice elsewhere

"Having constant health warnings and options about where to get support and find treatment in a safe way wouldn't resolve the problem completely, but it would be help."

She also raised concerns about personal safety.

"Some of these donors are advertising as natural insemination only, which is essentially in some cases coercing women to have sex when they possibly wouldn't want to."

Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook, said it would "review any groups or posts shared with us and remove content which violates our rules".

"We have a dedicated reporting process for regulators to flag content which doesn't break these policies but violates local law. We are in close collaboration with the relevant authorities on this matter," it added.

A National Police Chiefs' Council spokesperson said: "Unregulated sperm donation carries many risks and can exploit the most vulnerable. We strongly advise the public to understand the risks and stick to regulated routes.

"If anyone has concerns, we'd encourage them to report it to the police so we can provide support and investigate."

Her writing posed the novel premise: What does it mean to be a woman? Her early death meant she never saw the movement she inspired

Megan Marshall Illustration by Gaby D’Alessandro Summer 2026

A portrait of Fuller, inspired by her 1845 Woman in the Nineteenth Century, which argued for equality of the sexes. The book’s opening illustration featured mystical symbols of harmonizing opposites, including the Ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail. Illustration by Gaby D’AlessandroThe New England writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are household names today, credited with originating the American ideal Emerson termed “self-reliance.” Less remembered is their friend Margaret Fuller, who was every bit their intellectual equal. Yet of the three, Fuller is the easiest to imagine in contemporary America. Her breakthroughs in journalism, social reform and female self-determination have become part of the fabric of modern life.

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1810, Fuller was the first child of an ambitious lawyer-politician who experimented with offering a boy’s college preparatory curriculum to his very bright daughter. She read fluently at age 4, translated Latin at 6, and excelled in oral argument and persuasive writing, earning a reputation as a prodigy. By 15 she was “determined on distinction,” she wrote to a teacher. But how? Although Fuller’s capabilities matched those of highly educated men, she couldn’t attend college or enter a profession. Her close friend James Freeman Clarke wondered in his journal, “Why was she a woman?” 

Fuller pondered the question, too. What did it mean to be a woman? Or, as she asked a group of Boston women during one of her famous weekly conversation circles: “What were we born to do? How shall we do it?”

By then she’d joined the group of spiritual reformers known as transcendentalists. The men in the group honored Fuller by making her the first editor of their influential journal, the Dial. Fuller shaped its contents, favoring literature, the arts and matters of the spirit over theological dispute. She introduced her own vision of the exemplary individual in a July 1843 essay titled “The Great Lawsuit: Man Versus Men. Woman Versus Women.”

In the essay, Fuller drew on her experience of exclusion from higher education and the professions, while being labeled unfeminine for her superior intelligence. She argued that the “great radical dualism” of male and female was false: “There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.” All must be permitted to realize their unique capabilities to the utmost, she concluded, in order to achieve “fulness of being.” 

The month her Dial essay appeared, Fuller was traveling through Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin to gather material for her first book, Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. In this eyewitness account of America’s fast-developing West, Fuller sympathized with overworked pioneer wives while deploring the treatment of Native Americans—the region’s “rightful lords”—and the destruction of old-growth forests. She attended a gathering of Chippewa and Ottawa tribes at Mackinac Island, conversing with the Native women in sign language and joining them in pounding their breakfast cornmeal. She wandered the prairies and rode the rapids to offer vivid natural descriptions and raise her readers’ environmental awareness. Thoreau praised her “rich extempore writing; talking with pen in hand”—an approach he went on to take in his own books, which were yet to come. 

When the New York City newspaperman Horace Greeley urged Fuller to expand “The Great Lawsuit” into a book, the result—Woman in the Nineteenth Century—sold out its first printing in a week. The book included accounts of female inmates at Sing Sing Prison, many of them jailed for prostitution. Fuller considered them “women like myself, save that they are victims of wrong and misfortune.” Her book exhorted men to “remove arbitrary barriers” and allow women to pursue any profession they wished, from scholar to sea captain. She recalled watching young girls happily using carpentry tools. “Where these tastes are indulged, cheerfulness and good-humor are promoted. Where they are forbidden, because ‘such things are not proper for girls,’ they grow sullen and mischievous.” 

After Greeley hired her as a front-page columnist for his New-York Tribune, Fuller published more than 200 articles—cultural reviews and features on the city’s asylums, as well as editorials that opposed the death penalty and supported Black voting rights and Irish immigration. In 1846, she sailed to Europe as the Tribune’s foreign correspondent. There, she covered the European revolutions of 1848 and directed a hospital for the wounded in Rome. In July 1850, she sailed back to the United States with a new Italian husband and a child, only to be shipwrecked in a violent storm off Fire Island. All three perished. Fuller was 40 years old.

Had she lived, Fuller was expected to preside over the first National Woman’s Rights Convention, held in Worcester, Massachusetts, in October 1850. Instead, the more than 1,000 delegates and speakers, who included Sojourner Truth, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone and Frederick Douglass, remembered Fuller with a moment of silence, mourning the loss of “her guiding hand—her royal presence.”