The head of NHS complaints has told MPs that it is ‘settling around two multi-million-pound payouts every week for failings in maternity care’; giving evidence to the all-party Commons health and social care committee on the safety of maternity services in England, Helen Vernon, chief executive of NHS Resolution, said this year’s ‘largest single payout for clinical negligence was about £37 million’, while adding that ‘around half of all cases dealt with by NHS Resolutions do not result in a compensation payment’.

New Zealand has voted by a large majority to legalise euthanasia, with preliminary figures from a dual referendum on euthanasia and recreational cannabis - held on the same day as the general election vote which ‘returned prime minister Jacinda Ardern to power with a landslide majority’ - showing that 65.2 per cent supported euthanasia, with 33.8 per cent opposed; this does not include overseas votes, ‘which account for almost 20 per cent of the total’ and will not be included until ‘final figures are released next Frid

According to the Telegraph, ‘[p]ro-choice campaigners have accused a Polish leader of stirring “civil war” after he urged members of the public to protect churches from being targeted during protests over a controversial abortion ruling’, which ‘found that a clause permitting terminations where there is severe damage to the foetus was unconstitutional’; on taking effect, it will allow abortions ‘only if a pregnancy threatens the woman’s health or is the result of a crime such as rape.’ Campaigners ‘spoke out ...

Following a survey showing ‘that one in 10 women never check their breasts regularly for cancer’, the Telegraph looked at ‘how the pandemic has impacted women's health’; we were told that ‘[r]eproductive health has been affected too. According to a report by Marie Stopes International, 1.9 million fewer women around the globe were able to access their services between January and June, in comparison to 2019.

Commenting on President Trump’s newly-appointed Supreme Court judge Amy Coney Barrett, the Telegraph’s Claire Cohen says the ‘48-year old mother-of-seven has just been confirmed as only the fifth female Supreme Court Justice. Women should be cheering... right?’ Apparently not, however, since Ms Barretts’s ‘record points to a woman fully prepared to overturn Roe vs Wade, the landmark legal ruling that gave women in America the right to abortion.

Further demonstrations succeeded in blocking traffic ‘across Warsaw last night as part of nationwide protests’ on the fifth day of such protests following Poland’s supreme court ruling that ‘the current abortion law permitting terminations’ in cases of ‘severe damage to the foetus’ was ‘unconstitutional’; ‘critics’ accused the government, the ‘socially conservative and pro-Catholic Law and Justice party’, of ‘using its alleged influence on the court as a backdoor means of introducing anti-abort