A former BBC Director of News and Current Affairs has revealed how the trans agenda played a significant part in driving her from the corporation.

Fran Unsworth, who stepped down from the top job in 2022, told UnHerd that it was relentlessly difficult dealing with “progressive editorial issues and the bullying around them”.

She pointed to a pervasive “social phenomenon” at the BBC, which prioritised being “kind to transitioning people” to such an extent that “maintaining impartiality became quite difficult”.

In an interview with ex-BBC editor Rob Burley, Unsworth said: “It was bullying. But it wasn’t just the trans issue. There was lots and lots of bullying going on about all sorts of things: people didn’t want to hear from certain points of view; they’d ‘no platform’ them”.

“The world went mad, and the BBC, because it is part of the world, went a bit mad with it. This was going on in every institution in society; there was a kind of national bullying going on.”

Regarding the transgender issue, she explained to Burley: “As you well know, editorial decision-making in the BBC isn’t top-down. It’s about editors deciding what they want to put on their programmes. And one of the big factors in it is because they took so much heat whenever they went near this subject.”

A 25-year-old nursing student is condemning the Trump-Vance administration for allowing abortion pills to remain accessible by mail, saying that taking the pills put her in a coma and almost killed her.

The fight over whether abortion pills can be mailed from pro-life states into pro-abortion states has become the most central battle for the pro-life movement since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Earlier this month, the movement scored a key victory.

On May 1, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Louisiana that pills-by-mail violated the state’s pro-life laws and issued a ruling that essentially reinstated the FDA’s pre-2021 requirement for an in-person appointment to obtain abortion pills.

However, on May 4, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an administrative stay pausing the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in response to a petition for emergency relief from two major pharmaceutical companies that produce the abortion pill, temporarily maintaining the status quo until May 11.

The Supreme Court has since granted another extension for several days, keeping access to abortion pills by mail open as litigation continues.

These stays prompted a heartfelt and disturbing editorial in The Hill by Shanyce Thomas on May 11 titled, “Near-death abortion drug experience highlights safety concerns.”

“As soon as I read the breaking news, memories flooded back to me of the hospital room where I nearly died at age 19,” Thomas wrote. “No number of slogans or activists could help me in that moment. What I remember is the blood, the pain and the terrifying realization that when everything went wrong, I was completely on my own.”

“Mailing dangerous abortion drugs with no in-person examination, no meaningful safeguards and no regard for state law was never about women’s health,” she continued. “It was about politics.”

Thomas writes that when she was 19, she took abortion pills, believing the abortion industry’s assurances that it was “simple and safe” to do so. “What happened instead nearly cost me my life,” she recalled.

“This part is critical: My experience didn’t happen through the mail,” Thomas wrote. “It didn’t happen through an app or an online chat. I had an actual ultrasound for which I was physically present. There was at least some level of medical oversight. Yet even with that, everything went terribly wrong.”

After taking the second round of abortion pills, she began bleeding heavily and “passing clots” with unbearable pain. She went back to the clinic, where she was told everything was fine. The next morning, she was worse. Her father took her to the hospital, where doctors discovered that parts of her baby were still inside her and she needed emergency surgery. She went into septic shock.

“I don’t remember much of what happened next,” Thomas wrote. “I only know what doctors told me afterward. I spent about a month and a half in a coma as they worked to save my life. I was placed on an ECMO machine. I needed multiple blood transfusions. Doctors inserted a stent in my neck to access my veins. My parents stayed by my bedside the entire time, unsure whether I would survive.”

Thomas continued:

When I finally woke up, recovery was long and difficult. Nurses came to my home daily to manage a wound vacuum that helped my body heal from the inside out. Occupational therapists helped me relearn basic tasks like walking, showering and brushing my teeth.

The emotional recovery was just as real. I struggled with depression and trauma and spent time in therapy trying to process what had happened.… If I nearly died despite seeing a provider in person, it is important to ask how much more risk women face when black-box drugs are ordered online and taken at home without any in-person screening.

A convicted criminal turned rapper told friends at a gender reveal party for his unborn baby that if the child is not a boy, they will have an abortion.

Daniel Hernandez, who goes by the stage name Tekashi 6ix9ine, told his friends during a livestream at his unborn baby’s gender reveal, “If it’s not a boy, it’s abortion”.

Later in the livestream, when his girlfriend, Aliday Alter, says she thinks the unborn baby is a girl, the rapper reiterated that the baby would be aborted if it were a girl, stating that his girlfriend was okay with that as she is “open-minded”.

The comments were made just two weeks after Alter shared a photo of herself celebrating her pregnancy with the caption, “My world is about to change”.

Hernandez is a convicted felon who, in 2015, pleaded guilty to a felony count of use of a child in a sexual performance. In a cooperation agreement relating to another legal case, Hernandez admitted to carrying out years of domestic abuse; he was also arrested on domestic abuse charges in the Dominican Republic.

It later transpired at the gender reveal party that Alter was pregnant with a baby boy, meaning that no unborn child had to lose their life simply because of their sex on this occasion.

Evidence has emerged suggesting approximately 400 sex-selective abortions of baby girls happened in Britain between 2017 and 2021, despite the practice being illegal.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), which in the last financial year performed over 110,000 abortions in the UK, claims on its website that sex-selective abortions are not illegal, sparking wide condemnation. 

On its website, BPAS claims “The law is silent on the [sex-selective abortion] matter. Reason of fetal sex is not a specified ground for abortion within the Abortion Act, but nor is it specifically prohibited”.

The state of Louisiana has asked the Supreme Court to uphold a lower court ruling that blocked the distribution of the abortion pill mifepristone by mail nationwide.

The Louisiana attorney general’s office said in a filing that a 2023 Biden-era rule allowing mail delivery of mifepristone has led to thousands of illegal abortions in the state, despite its pro-life laws.

The abortions are also “directly causing tens of thousands of dollars of harm to Louisiana in the form of investigatory costs and Medicaid costs from statistically certain emergency room visits,” according to the state.

Louisiana thus “had no choice but to file this suit,” the attorney general’s office said.

The state urged the justices to preserve a decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last Friday that halted the Biden rule nationwide and reinstated the previous in-person dispensing requirement. Louisiana also called on the high court to reject emergency appeals by two pharmaceutical companies that make mifepristone.

The Supreme Court temporarily paused the Fifth Circuit’s ruling for one week on Monday.

The Biden Food and Drug Administration’s abortion pill policy, issued after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, has massively expanded the use of the mifepristone, undermining pro-life laws and causing serious harm to women, according to data.

Abortionists and abortion drug networks have mailed tens of thousands of pills into pro-life states under the rule, often enabled by “shield laws” in Democrat states that protect illegal abortion pill distributors from out-of-state law enforcement.

Around two-thirds of abortions in the U.S. are currently estimated to be committed using pills. Nearly 250,000 so-called “telehealth abortions,” or abortions committed with pills prescribed remotely, occurred in 2024 – more than a quarter of all abortions that year – according to a report by the pro-abortion Society of Family Planning.

A three-judge panel of Fifth Circuit unanimously ruled on Friday that Louisiana is likely to succeed in its challenge, saying that the FDA policy “injures Louisiana by undermining its laws protecting unborn human life and also by causing it to spend Medicaid funds on emergency care for women harmed by mifepristone. Both injuries are irreparable.”

An early care scheme for women who have suffered miscarriages could save an estimated 10,000 unborn lives a year, researchers have suggested.

The scheme, trialled at Birmingham Women and Children’s Hospital, provides increasing care to mothers following each miscarriage to enable them to give birth to future children.

Currently, the NHS requires a woman to lose three babies before offering tests, support and treatment. But the study found that its system carried a 4 per cent lower risk of future loss.

Tommy’s, the pregnancy and baby charity behind the new support model, estimated that there are around 250,000 miscarriages in the UK each year.

The organisation criticised the “3 miscarriage wait” for leaving “countless families unsupported, their grief unrecognised and opportunities to improve their situation – and possibly prevent further loss – missed”.

In contrast, it explained that the new system is “easily achievable, restores dignity to miscarriage care and, ultimately, could save babies’ lives”.

Sally, 33, who has lost two babies, explained: “Putting these systems in place show women that they are thought about, that one miscarriage is enough to be thought about and to be supported”.

Baroness Merron, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care, also welcomed the study: “Pregnancy and baby loss can have a devastating impact on women and families, who too often feel they have been left without the care and support they need. Research like this is crucial”.

Scotland now has some of the most extreme pro-abortion legislation in the world, so a court verdict in favour of the right of pro-life activists to offer support to worried mothers is very welcome indeed.

A Scottish grandmother who was arrested for holding a sign in an abortion “buffer zone” has had the charges against her dropped.

Rose Docherty, 75, was the first person to be charged under the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Act, Scotland’s buffer zone legislation.

Docherty was arrested and charged in September last year for holding a sign outside the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow that read “Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want”.

The case against Rose Docherty was dropped following an argument from her legal team that the charges against her violated her Article 10 right to freedom of expression. 

On hearing the verdict, Docherty said, “This verdict is a major victory for free speech in Scotland and the UK. It shows that peacefully offering consensual conversation on a public street, which is all I have ever done, can never be a crime”.

“My case shows how ‘buffer zones’ are used by authorities to impose censorship. ‘Buffer zone’ legislation must be repealed in Scotland and across the UK to ensure it is not misused to target peaceful and lawful expression again in the future”, she added.

Scotland’s buffer zone legislation is the most extreme legislation of its kind in the world.

It creates a minimum of 200m ‘safe access’, or buffer, zones around any facility that performs abortions, where offering support to women would be criminalised. The 200m is a minimum, as abortion providers can apply for the zone to be extended, with the Act giving the Scottish Government the power to extend any buffer zone beyond the 200m if they judge that the existing zone “does not adequately protect” women seeking an abortion. There is no limit on the size of the buffer zone that can be created under this power.

The minimum size of the buffer zones in Scotland extends further than the minimum size of any other buffer zones in the world. For example, the Public Order Act 2023 in England and Wales sets the limits of the buffer zones at 150m and the legislation does not give the Government the power to extend buffer zones beyond 150m. Most buffer zones in Northern Ireland are 100m, half the size of those in Scotland. 

Within these zones, it is illegal to influence a person in regard to their decision “to access… the provision of abortion” in an abortion clinic or a hospital. These provisions make offers of help to women seeking an abortion, such as what Rose Docherty was alleged to have been doing, illegal within a buffer zone, and could criminalise silent prayer.

Anyone who commits an offence can be fined up to £10,000 on a summary conviction, or an unlimited fine on indictment.

The provisions of the Act apply to anything that is “visible or audible” within a buffer zone, even if these relate to private buildings. This means it may be illegal for pro-life signs to be displayed from a window within a private home or outside a place of worship if the signs are within the boundaries of or visible to a buffer zone. Similarly, conversations in private homes or outside churches may be included if they are audible inside a buffer zone. Referring to private dwellings, Gillian Mackay, who introduced the legislation, told the Committee “it is essential that such premises are covered by the legislation”.

What is essential is that babies are saved, and more will be thanks to this court verdict and the courage of Rose Docherty.

More than two-thirds of the British [ublic have seen through the Labour effort to push assisted suicide on the country. New polling has revealed that fewer than one in three (29%) of the general public think that a new assisted suicide bill should be introduced as soon as possible in the same form as the assisted suicide Bill that has failed to become law – as would have to happen should an MP want to use the Parliament Acts to bypass the House of Lords to force the Bill into law.

In contrast, a majority of the public (53%) think the Bill should either not return or, if it returns, it should be introduced with stronger safeguards, which would mean introducing a different Bill, therefore ruling out the use of the Parliament Acts to bypass the Lords.

The polling also found that only 34% of the public polled thought the Lords should not be able to block laws passed by elected MPs if the law is not in the Government’s manifesto. Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill is a Private Members’ Bill and was not part of Labour’s General Election manifesto.

Following the failure of Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill, polling organisation More in Common asked 2,041 adults in Britain at the end of April this year which safeguards would be important to them should another assisted suicide Bill be introduced. 

The polling found that the overwhelming majority of the public believes that, if the assisted suicide Bill were to return, palliative care must first be offered as an alternative to assisted suicide before assisted suicide can take place

90% of respondents who took a position on the question thought that palliative care must be offered as an alternative to assisted suicide first. 52% of respondents agreed it was “essential” that palliative care must be offered as an alternative to assisted suicide first and a further 31% said this was “Good to have”. Only 9% thought it unnecessary.

The polling also found 71% of those who took a position were supportive of the need for approval from a judge as a safeguard. 34% of respondents agreed it was “essential” that a judge approve assisted suicide and a further 30% said this was “Good to have”.

In March last year, Kim Leadbeater removed the requirement that a High Court judge approve assisted suicide applications, despite the fact that this was presented as the flagship safeguard of her Bill, and despite assurances from her that this safeguard would not be removed. The More in Common polling shows the overwhelming majority of the public would want this safeguard in place should an assisted suicide Bill return.

The polling also found 95% of those who took a position were supportive of the need for “strict rules against family or financial pressure on the patient” as a safeguard in cases of assisted suicide. 65% of respondents agreed this safeguard was “essential” and a further 22% said it was “Good to have”.

Thousands of people called on Ireland to ‘change course’ on abortion at this year's March for Life in Dublin.

Independent TD Ken O’Flynn told the crowds marching from St Stephen’s Green to Molesworth Street on Bank Holiday Monday that the debate on abortion “is not over and we will not be silenced”.

Currently, abortion is available on demand in Ireland up to twelve weeks, with a three-day reflection period. In 2024, there were 10,850 abortions, the highest on record.

The march organiser, Pro Life Campaign Ireland, wrote: “Several thousand people marched through Dublin today, and the energy, warmth, and hope in that crowd was something special. Our speakers gave powerful, honest addresses.

“The facts they shared are ones the Government cannot keep ignoring. Since 2018, abortions in Ireland have risen from fewer than 3,000 a year to close to 11,000. Today, 1 in 6 babies’ lives ends in abortion in this country. That is not what people were promised.”

O’Flynn, TD for Cork North-Central, said that instead of practical support being given to pregnant women in crisis, there is a push to remove safeguards and expand access to abortion. He told the crowds that we “need to change the course that we’re on”.

Last month, the leader of the Social Democrats introduced an “extreme” proposal to further liberalise Ireland’s abortion law by abolishing the mandatory three-day reflection period.

Deputy Holly Cairns’s Reproductive Rights (Amendment) Bill 2026 would also allow all babies deemed to have a “fatal condition” to be aborted. Presently, it must be certain that they would die within 28 days of birth.

The proposals, which will be debated at Second Stage during Private Members’ Time, also decriminalise doctors if they “intentionally end the life of a foetus otherwise than in accordance” with the abortion law.

In addition, medics’ right to “conscientious objection” would be qualified by a “legal duty to provide prompt and appropriate medical assistance to any person in a medical emergency”.