health, the best outcomes for mothers and babies come with a rate of no more than 15 percent, according to the World Health Organization.

Sam, a 29-year-old chef in Los Angeles, was five months pregnant when watching The Business of Being Born convinced her that hospitals could be dangerous and a home birth would be more meaningful. She and her husband found a midwife, a doula and a back-up OB and spent the rest of the pregnancy preparing.

After 24 hours of labor, Sam’s contractions were two or three minutes apart, yet when her midwife examined her, she was only 3 centimeters dilated. The midwife gently told her that she was nowhere close to delivering, despite her contractions, exhaustion and pain. Sam asked to be taken to the hospital.

The changeFemale genital mutilation is still practised at a rate of one girl every 11 seconds around the world in 29 countries. At least 130 million women and girls live with the consequences of having their sexual organs forcibly mutilated, with many suffering from fistula, maternal mortality, child mortality, infection from Aids and typhus, and post-traumatic stress.

Just 10 minutes before Yahya Jammeh, president of the Gambia, announced on Monday night that the controversial surgical intervention would be outlawed in his country, Jaha Dukureh, an anti-FGM campaigner, received a call from the president’s office to let her know that her work had been successful. They told her the president would announce that the Gambia was moving into the 21st century and there was no place for FGM in the modern