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      Fewer U.S. Adults Say They Will Have Children, Study Finds

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      A new study breaks down the reasons more U.S. adults say they are unlikely to have children.When Jurnee McKay, 25, imagines having children, a series of scary scenarios pop into her mind: the “horrors” of childbirth, risks associated with pregnancy, a flighty potential partner, exorbitant child care costs.Abortion care restrictions are also on her list of fears. So Ms. McKay, a nursing student in Orlando, decided to eliminate the possibility of an accidental pregnancy. But the first doctor she consulted refused to remove her fallopian tubes, she said, insisting that she might change her mind after meeting her “soul mate.”“For some reason,” she said, “society looks at women who choose not to make life harder for themselves as crazy.”Next week, she will speak with another doctor about sterilization.Like Ms. McKay, a growing number of U.S. adults say they are unlikely to raise children, according to a study released on Thursday by the Pew Research Center. When the survey was conducted in 2023, 47 percent of those younger than 50 without children said they were unlikely ever to have children, an increase of 10 percentage points since 2018.When asked why kids were not in their future, 57 percent said they simply didn’t want to have them. Women were more likely to respond this way than men (64 percent vs. 50 percent). Further reasons included the desire to focus on other things, like their career or interests; concerns about the state of the world; worries about the costs involved in raising a child; concerns about the environment, including climate change; and not having found the right partner.The results echo a 2023 Pew study that found that only 26 percent of adults said having children was extremely or very important to live a fulfilling life. The U.S. fertility rate has been falling over the last decade, dipping to about 1.6 births per woman in 2023. This is the lowest number on record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And it is less than what would be required for the population to replace itself from one generation to the next.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Brittney Griner Announces Birth of Son

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      Less than two years after her release from a Russian penal colony, the W.N.B.A. center and two-time Olympic gold medal winner said that her son was born on July 8.Brittney Griner, the W.N.B.A. center and two-time Olympic gold medal winner, announced on Friday that she and her wife, Cherelle Griner, have welcomed their first child, less than two years after the basketball star was released from a penal colony in Russia and made her return to the sport for the Phoenix Mercury.Griner, 33, discussed the birth of her son during an interview on “We Need To Talk,” a CBS Sports show, saying that he was born on July 8, weighing 7 pounds, 8 ounces. Earlier this year, the couple said that they planned to name their son Bash.On social media, Griner and her wife had posted about their excitement about the pregnancy. After the “We Need To Talk” host asked what Griner was looking forward to about parenting, she revealed that her son had already arrived.“They say as soon as you see him, everything that you thought mattered just goes out the window,” Griner said. “And that’s literally what happens.”Griner will head to Paris for the 2024 Olympics to play for the U.S. women’s basketball team, with the first game scheduled for July 29 against Japan. She said that she was disappointed that she had to leave her newborn but that “he’ll understand.”Last month, Griner wrote on social media that she and Cherelle were celebrating their sixth anniversary.The birth announcement comes two months after the release of Griner’s memoir, “Coming Home,” which details the 10 months she spent in a Russian penal colony after being detained in an airport for possession of 0.7 grams of medicinal marijuana oil she had forgotten to take out of her luggage.At the prison, she sewed uniforms for the Russian military and survived on spoiled food.Griner was released in a December 2022 prisoner swap negotiated by the Biden administration. She had been sentenced to nine years in the penal colony.“My life became a blur of sweeping and dusting, cleaning and praying, hoping I could somehow get home,” Griner wrote in her memoir.In her first game back in the W.N.B.A. in 2023, Griner scored a team high of 18 points. This year, she returns to the United States women’s national roster. Griner won Olympic gold medals with the team in 2016 and 2021. More

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      Supreme Court Allows, for Now, Emergency Abortions in Idaho

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      A majority of the justices dismissed the case, reinstating a lower-court ruling that paused the state’s near-total abortion ban.The Supreme Court said on Thursday that it would dismiss a case about emergency abortions in Idaho, temporarily clearing the way for women in the state to receive an abortion when their health is at risk.The brief, unsigned opinion declared that the case had been “improvidently granted.” The decision reinstates a lower-court ruling that had halted Idaho’s near-total ban on abortion and permitted emergency abortions at hospitals if needed to protect the health of the mother while the case makes its way through the courts.The decision, which did not rule on the substance of the case, appeared to closely mirror a version that appeared briefly on the court’s website a day earlier and was reported by Bloomberg. A court spokeswoman acknowledged on Wednesday that the publications unit had “inadvertently and briefly uploaded a document” and said a ruling in the case would appear in due time.The joined cases, Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States, focus on whether a federal law aimed at ensuring emergency care for any patient supersedes Idaho’s abortion ban, one of the nation’s strictest. The state outlaws the procedure, with few exceptions unless a woman’s life is in danger.The decision was essentially 6 to 3, with three conservative justices siding with the liberal wing in saying they would drop the case.It was the first time that the court was confronted with the question of statewide restrictions on abortion, many of which swiftly took effect after the court eliminated a constitutional right to the procedure two years ago.Tracking Abortion Bans Across the CountryThe New York Times is tracking the status of abortion laws in each state following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Biking Helped Me Managing Grief

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      A grieving mother finds a new beginning on two wheels.My first bike was lavender and had Big Bird on it, a sight to behold under the Christmas tree. I rode that thing until the training wheels practically fell off — gliding around our back alley, cutting through baseball fields and, much to my mom’s horror, thudding down our basement stairs one afternoon.Luckily, that incident didn’t scare me off bikes, and I continued to ride into my teenage years. But a driver’s license meant I abandoned my bike. The wheels stopped rotating, the bell stopped ringing and my helmet stayed clipped in a dim corner of our basement.My mom died following a grueling battle with multiple sclerosis when I was barely 18. For years afterward, I distracted myself with college-aged escapism: moving away, making new friends, sneaking into bars, taking road trips and ultimately earning a degree.I would head home for breaks and holidays, driving around in my mom’s old Hyundai Excel hatchback. Every winding turn reminded me that, while I was moving through life and becoming an adult, part of me was still stuck in place. Only during these drives would I allow myself to feel the weight of losing her. I thought grieving was something you did alone.***I returned to biking when a lot of people did, at the beginning of the pandemic. I bought a beach cruiser on Craigslist and spent my evenings whizzing along the Baltimore waterfront amid a sea of dog walkers and other pedestrians trying to figure out what was going on in the world.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Woman Admits Killing Pregnant Teenager for Her Baby

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      Clarisa Figueroa, 51, of Chicago, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Prosecutors say she strangled the young mother and tried to pass the baby off as her own. A Chicago woman who killed a pregnant teenager and aimed to pass the baby off as her own pleaded guilty to murder Tuesday and was sentenced to 50 years in prison, prosecutors said.In April 2019, Clarisa Figueroa, 51, who had been pretending to be pregnant, fatally strangled Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, 19, who was eight months pregnant, according to a legal document known as a bond proffer obtained by The Associated Press.Ms. Figueroa cut Ms. Ochoa-Lopez’s baby from her body in hopes of passing him off as her own, the court record said. The boy later died.Now, Ms. Figueroa is set to serve her sentence at an Illinois state prison, according to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, ending a grim five-year case that stunned a community and left a husband widowed and without a son.“The memory of my infant son’s last breath in my arms is complete agony,” the baby’s father, Yovanny Lopez, said in a statement in the courtroom Tuesday, according to The A.P.Ms. Figueroa and her daughter, Desiree Figueroa, were arrested in May 2019 after investigators found Ms. Ochoa-Lopez’s car near Ms. Figueroa’s home and then discovered Ms. Ochoa-Lopez’s remains stuffed in a garbage bag in Ms. Figueroa’s garage, according to the proffer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The History Behind Arizona’s 160-Year-Old Abortion Ban

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      The state’s Supreme Court ruled that the 1864 law is enforceable today. Here is what led to its enactment.The 160-year-old Arizona abortion ban that was upheld on Tuesday by the state’s highest court was among a wave of anti-abortion laws propelled by some historical twists and turns that might seem surprising.For decades after the United States became a nation, abortion was legal until fetal movement could be felt, usually well into the second trimester. Movement, known as quickening, was the threshold because, in a time before pregnancy tests or ultrasounds, it was the clearest sign that a woman was pregnant.Before that point, “women could try to obtain an abortion without having to fear that it was illegal,” said Johanna Schoen, a professor of history at Rutgers University. After quickening, abortion providers could be charged with a misdemeanor.“I don’t think it was particularly stigmatized,” Dr. Schoen said. “I think what was stigmatized was maybe this idea that you were having sex outside of marriage, but of course, married women also ended their pregnancies.”Women would terminate pregnancies in several different ways, such as ingesting herbs or medicinal potions that were thought to induce a miscarriage, Dr. Schoen said. The herbs commonly used included pennyroyal and tansy. Another method involved inserting an object in the cervix to try to interrupt a pregnancy or terminate it by causing an infection, Dr. Schoen said.Since tools to determine early pregnancy did not yet exist, many women could honestly say that they were not sure if they were pregnant and were simply taking herbs to restore their menstrual period.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How 2 Families Faced a Catastrophic Birth Defect

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      Ashlee Wiseman, a waitress at a Sizzler in Idaho Falls, Idaho, was 10 weeks pregnant when a nurse phoned with crushing news: a test of fetal DNA in her blood had found that her baby girl had trisomy 18, a catastrophic genetic abnormality, and was unlikely to survive.Devastated, she called her partner, Clint Risenmay, who was at work. He broke down in tears.Ashlee’s response was different.“A still small voice took over me,” she said. “I’m like, ‘I’m not going to listen to them. There has to be something that can help her. And there has to be someone who can help.’”A social media search led her to Dr. John Carey, a professor emeritus of pediatrics at the University of Utah, who has devoted his life to helping families dealing with trisomy 18. He supports pregnant women who chose abortion, but also helps couples who want to have babies with this rare condition, though most will be stillborn or die within a year.Ashlee and Clint were undeterred. They could do it, they assured Dr. Carey. They would lovingly care for a baby with complex medical needs.The consequences of trisomy 18 are dire. The babies have three copies of chromosome 18 instead of two and, as a result, have serious medical and developmental problems. Nearly all are unable to eat, walk or talk, and all have severe cognitive disabilities. They often need open-heart surgery and feeding and breathing tubes. Many women, after hearing what is in store, choose abortion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Rock Climber Finds a Softer Strength

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      I don’t know what time it was when my husband at the time, the rock climber Tommy Caldwell, finally scrambled over the summit. The sun had risen sometime during the first part of the climb and had set again hours later. I squinted up at him, tired eyes burning as I watched his shadow moving in the beam of my headlight. He had just completed the second free ascent of the Direct Route on the northwest face of Half Dome, a 2,000-foot climb in Yosemite National Park.We were elite professional climbers, and this was what we did best. Sometimes we made history together; other times I supported him in his feats, belaying and carrying all the gear. Either way, the days were long and hard.The climber Todd Skinner spent 61 days in 1993 working to establish the Direct Route, then considered the most difficult big wall climb in the world, before reaching the top. On our climb in 2007, our 2 a.m. wake-up, more than 24 hours earlier, hadn’t even felt all that early to me. Sleeping in past midnight? That meant what I was getting up for wasn’t that rad, that hard core. Tommy made it to the top in a day, adding a move that made the climb more difficult than the one Mr. Skinner had pioneered. It felt routine.Hanging in the middle of Half Dome was an ordinary thing. Ascending ropes with bloody knuckles and a heavy pack thousands of feet off the ground was as conventional to me as grabbing the bananas and apples in the produce section: just part of my day. Climbers pride themselves on being better than normal people. Not just in the “I climbed a mountain and you didn’t” type of way, but in the fabric of how we approach life. How we eat, where we sleep, the stories we walk away with: It’s all better.By the time I was in my mid-20s, I was a walking archetype of how to succeed in that world because of the belief system I followed: suck it up, persevere, win. I was used to pushing the level of climbing further, used to doing things that no other women had done — and even, a couple of times, things that no guys had done.I specialized in free climbing, a particular (and particularly challenging) discipline that requires a climber to rely on her gear only for protection from a fall, not for any assistance in moving up the rock. I had free-climbed Yosemite’s El Capitan three times, by three independent routes. Elsewhere in Yosemite, I had established a new route in 2008, Meltdown, that was widely viewed then as the hardest traditional climb in the world, not repeated until 2018. (“Traditional” meaning I depended on a rope suspended by gear I placed myself, rather than on bolts permanently installed in the rock.) For a decade, I had appeared in climbing films and on the pages of climbing magazines. Pushing through the pain, sacrificing my body, shoving my fear away: It’s all what made me better than the rest. I liked being better than the rest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More