By Maria Lewandowska We need to fight for legal and accessible abortion – everywhere. On the 27th of January 2021, after a three-month delay, the verdict of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal from October 2020 has come into force, prohibiting abortion on the ground of fetal anomaly, and effectively banning abortion whatsoever. This decision further restricts […]
Latest articles
The Impact of COVID-19 on Abortion Education
By Dr. Sarah Prager 2020 was a year like no other, and that holds true from the perspective of an American abortion provider as well. I am an academic OBGYN, working at a university where I am the Chief of the Complex Family Planning (CFP) service as well as the director of the CFP Fellowship. […]
Current Abortion Provision in Northern Ireland
By Dr Siobhan Kirk Northern Ireland (NI) had one of the most restrictive and punitive abortion laws in Europe until 2019. An advantage of the non-functioning Northern Ireland Assembly in 2019 was that the law was changed to allow abortion under the UK Parliament’s Northern Ireland Act 2019. However, the Health Minister and the Department […]
Book Review – Broken Bonds: Surrogate Mothers Speak Out
By Charlotte Talbot Introduction ‘Broken Bonds: Surrogate Mothers Speak Out’ is a collection of stories describing the injustices that women face when undertaking surrogacy. The stories are from around the world, written in first person by women involved in both commercial and altruistic surrogacy. The editors hold the view that surrogacy should be ended globally, […]
IPV during pregnancy has negative implications on maternal and neonatal health
by Vithya Murugan @vithyamurugan Defined as a systematic, repetitive pattern of manipulative behavior used in order to gain and maintain power and control over a current or former partner/spouse, intimate partner violence (IPV) includes physical, sexual, psychological and/or financial abuse. Each year in the United States, 7 million women experience IPV.1 The experience of IPV […]
BDSM Consent in Non-BDSM Sex
By Kayla Beare In a post-#MeToo world, the need for a clear-cut and comprehensive definition of sexual consent has become a topic of conversation for many. The BDSM community is often said to be ahead of the curve in having this conversation, and there is much that can be learnt from this community. BDSM, an […]
Questioning Colonial Legacies in Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Interventions
by Kayla Beare Contraception has improved the lives of countless since entering the mainstream in the 1960s. However, like most facets of sexual and reproductive health, contraception is imbued in a history of colonialism. As someone who was born and raised in a previously colonised country, the presence of colonial legacies in global health have […]
Transforming abortion access beyond the pandemic: patient experiences with at-home medical abortion through telemedicine in Australia
By Laura Fix,1 Jane W Seymour,1 Monisha Vaid Sandhu,2 Jacquie O’Brien,2 Catriona Melville,2 Danielle Mazza,3 Terri-Ann Thompson1 Telemedicine delivery of medical abortion is common and safe In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, telemedicine has emerged as key to sustaining access to essential reproductive health care services. Medical abortion care provided via telemedicine has been […]
Hormones and Lesbians: What We Still Don’t Know
by Catherine Meads With all the talk of love drugs and sex hormones influencing how people feel and behave, or even who they love or feel that they are (for example, in cross-sex hormone trans debates), we thought it would be worthwhile re-examining the evidence on differences of sex hormones in female sexual orientation. Our systematic […]
How to include the perspectives of women living with HIV in research
By Florence Anam1, Cecilia Chung2, Teresia Otieno3, Martha Tholanah4, Alice Welbourn5 As the 23rd international AIDS conference nears, we reflect once more on what it takes to ensure that issues facing women living with HIV are adequately addressed, especially in the context of COVID-19 and increased rates of domestic violence globally. We know how violence […]