It's not quite the seven ages of man, but there is certainly a preoccupation with the exits and entrances of men and women in the papers this morning.
First, the mewling and puking, and the Independent splashes with a photo of twin babies, the first to be conceived in the UK as the result of a pioneering fertility treatment. "A cheap, painless alternative to IVF?" asks the paper.
In Vitro Maturation, the new technique used to make the babies, dispenses with the use of costly fertility drugs, saving up to £1,500 on the normal price of treatment. It is also safer for the one in three women among those seeking fertility treatment who have polycystic ovaries. The babies were conceived using eggs that were removed from their mother's ovaries while still undeveloped and then matured artificially in the laboratory before being fertilised with their father's sperm.
Meanwhile, the Times features a large picture of a twelve-week-old foetus on its front page and reports that MPs are planning the most extensive liberalisation of abortion laws for 40 years. The MPs will propose that women should be allowed to seek an abortion on the basis of informed consent - dropping the requirement for two doctors' signatures - and to perform the second stage of a medical termination at home rather than at a hospital or clinic.
The paper also says that a Commons science and technology committee report on abortion law, due next month, is likely to back the current upper time limit for most abortions of 24 weeks. The Times broadly approves but argues that what must change is "the appalling casualness with which the issue is sometimes treated by those who regard the most profound decisions as a prosaic process." The Mail is less convinced, and sums up its views in a not-so-rhetorical question, pitched alongside a blurred picture of a 1lb 3oz (0.53kg) baby in intensive care: "On the day a health minister insisted the 24-week limit on abortion does NOT need changing, what does this baby, born this month at 23 weeks, tell us about the law?"
Moving on, and Shakespeare's whining schoolboy with his shining morning face may well be creeping unwillingly to school if he was born in August, according to the Guardian. The paper reports that new research has found that children born in August do worse in school tests, and are more likely to struggle with reading and writing and then to drop out when they reach 16. The study, based on records for every child in the state school system, concludes that August-born children - particularly girls - are penalised by an "unlucky birth draw" which in extreme cases is leading to children being mistakenly labelled as having special educational needs.
However, if they do make it into a high-status, well-paid job, then their "second childishness" is likely to be long. The Times reports that life expectancy for professional women has "shot up by 30 months" to 85 years in only the last four years. Women in the top social class - or those who marry into it - have a life expectancy of 85.1 years, are in better shape than ever and have quicker access to healthcare. Their counterparts in the lower social classes, however, face a shorter life (78.1 years). Sans teeth, sans eyes ...
This is an edited extract from the Wrap, our digest of the daily papers.
