Deaths, Women | featured news

Robert Edwards, a Nobel prizewinner from Britain whose pioneering in vitro fertilization research led to the first test tube baby and has since brought millions of people into the world, died Wednesday at age 87....

The husband of a pregnant woman who died in an Irish hospital has said he has no doubt she would be alive if she had been allowed an abortion. Savita Halappanavar's family said she asked several times for her pregnancy to be terminated because she had severe back pain and was miscarrying.

Space used to be a man's world. Then came Sally Ride, who blazed a cosmic trail into orbit for U.S. women. With a pitch perfect name out of a pop song refrain, she joined the select club of American space heroes the public knew by heart: Shepard, Glenn, Armstrong and Aldrin....

A son dying young. A six-year battle with cancer. A humiliating betrayal. Americans knew Elizabeth Edwards in large part through her tragedies, but more importantly, they knew her for the vitality and determination she showed in dealing with them. Her cancer incurable and her former-presidential-candidate husband mired in a paternity scandal, she did not shrink from public life but shared her story and advocated for health care reform.

A mother in Louisville, Kentucky, has died after saving her three children and two nieces by pushing them out the second-story window of her burning townhome.

Though not as well known as her male peers, Height was a strong presence in the movement. She was president of the National Council of Negro Women and played an important role in integrating the YWCA.

Dorothy Height, who was called the queen mother of the civil rights movement through seven decades of advocacy for racial equality -- including 41 years as president of the National Council of Negro Women -- has died.

Three women were shot to death in East St. Louis as they sat in a car with two children.

He felt lonely, said he hadn't had a girlfriend since 1984. He said his father didn't love him. And he detailed plans to kill young women. George Sodini, the 48-year-old man police blame for killing three women and wounding 10 others in a suburban Pittsburgh gym, left behind an online diary of his thoughts as he planned his attack.