by Jodie Smith In 2017 we celebrated 50 years since abortion was legalised in Great Britain under the 1967 Abortion Act, putting an end to the unsafe back-street abortions that were causing high frequencies of maternal death and severe morbidity. In these 50 years, there have been numerous clinical developments in abortion care, including the […]
Latest articles
Perforation Following IUD Insertion
by John Reynolds-Wright and Rebecca Heller We all know perforation is a recognised risk of IUD insertion. However, that doesn’t make it any less upsetting for either the clinician or the patient. It is often not recognised at the time it occurs and can go unnoticed for weeks, if not months. This can be […]
The Emotional Journey of My Decision to Undergo Risk-Reducing Surgery
By Clarissa Foster, Author of ‘Understanding BRCA’ After learning that I carried a harmful BRCA2 gene mutation, I needed to make the decision on how I would manage my increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. For a very brief moment, I considered the possibility of doing nothing at all – after all, I […]
Coercive and Controlling Behaviour in The Taming of the Shrew
The RSC’s new gender-flipped production of The Taming of the Shrew highlights the often overlooked coercive and controlling behaviour in the script. Gender Rewriting male characters as female can be done without changing much at all, as in the production of Timon of Athens at the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) earlier this year, where the […]
Inclusive Language in Sexual and Reproductive Health
The terminological preferences of many people living with HIV were articulated by Dilmitis and colleagues in the Journal of the International AIDS Society. The authors called for a vocabulary where “terms are clear, not clouded by ambiguity, … do not perpetuate or play into stereotypes, and do not hurt or marginalize the very people they […]
#DecolonisingContraception – The Importance of Preventing Unethical Practice in SRH and Learning from History
By Annabel Sowemimo Many times a week when I grab hold of a ‘Sims’ speculum (used in gynecology theatres across the world) I feel a shudder as I think of the legacy of J.Marion Sims, often nicknamed “the father of Gynaecology”. We can thank the many nameless Black American and poor women that Sims operated […]
Services for Sex Workers in London
By Millie Davies Access and engagement with healthcare among vulnerable groups is a particular interest of mine. Supervised by Professor Helen Ward from Imperial College London School of Public Health, and veteran in the field of sex workers services, I focused my Global Health BSc project on the identification of current sex worker services in […]
Physiological versus Synthetic Oestrogens for Bone Mineral Density in Premature Ovarian Insufficiency
By Eileen Chen My interest in female reproductive health and fertility led to this research project with Professor Jane MacDougall at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, to help guide treatment options for premature ovarian insufficiency. What is premature ovarian insufficiency, and why is it important? Premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) is a loss of ovarian function before the […]
Reproductive Health is a Public Health Issue
By Dr Sue Mann. Re-published with permission of FSRH. Dr Sue Mann and colleagues Monica Davison and Alison Hadley provide some background to the new suite of documents on reproductive health to be published by Public Health England (PHE). The documents will define the scope of reproductive health, provide a national overview of the current status […]
Women Suffer Most from Cuts to 17 NHS Operations
By Katherine Ripullone and Kate Womersley From 2019, the NHS will refuse hundreds of thousands of operations, as part of cost-cutting measures. What’s been less well publicized than the ‘17 blacklisted ops’, is how restriction and discontinuation of these procedures by NHS England will disproportionately affect women. This gender bias is not a new trend. […]