The largely rural but newly oil-rich US state of North Dakota on Tuesday outlawed most abortions in a move to challenge federal laws protecting a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy. The latest volley in a bitter culture war codifies the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation. Republican Governor Jack Dalrymple signed a bill that bans any abortion after a fetal heart beat can be detected, typically around six weeks after conception when many women still don't realize they are pregnant.

An estimated 233 million women in their fertile years will lack access to modern contraception by 2015, up from 221 million in 2010, according to a study published on Tuesday. Excluding China, developing countries will account for more than 80 percent of the unmet need, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, experts reported in The Lancet. Use of contraception among women aged 15-49 has risen over the past two decades, it said. But a demographic bulge means the total of women lacking access to fertility control will rise without funding to tackle the problem.

By Amy Sawitta Lefevre BANGKOK, March 8 (Reuters) - When Mallika told her parents she was pregnant at 17, they pulled her out of school and ordered her to marry the baby's father. But the marriage didn't happen and the one-time aspiring singer now cares for her baby girl alone. "I love her, but at the time I hid in shame," said Mallika, now 23 and a vendor of cheap, made-in-China clothing at a weekend market in Thailand's capital, Bangkok.

As baby Lili celebrates her first birthday in Australia, far away in India her surrogate mother recalls the day the child was born -- and on whom she never laid eyes. "I averted my gaze," says Seita Thapa, recounting her experience of giving birth at the Surrogacy Centre India clinic in New Delhi last February on behalf of a gay male couple who used an egg donated from another woman.