King’s College London Pregnant women, non-binary people and trans men were less likely to have gone ahead with planned caesarean births during the first lockdown. The research showed that 14% of parents surveyed who had a scheduled caesarean altered this plan because of the pandemic, either because they changed their minds or the hospital cancelled the procedure. Many favoured home births where their partner could be with them. Dr Mari Greenfield, from the School of Life Course Sciences, surveyed 1,754 new and expectant parents in the UK in April 2020, during the early weeks of the first lockdown. Dr Greenfield told the British Sociological Association’s online annual conference that of the 134 who had a caesarean birth arranged with a hospital, 8 (6%) had been cancelled by the NHS Trust, and 11 (8%) by the parents.