Category: Abortion
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Race, Reproductive Politics and Reproductive Health Care in the Contemporary United States
This editorial from the journal Contraception offers an important analysis of population and family planning policy in the USA, both in the context of current politics and also from history, starting as far back as 100 years ago. Carole Joffe, Willie J. Parker From: Contraception [Editorial] July 2012 reprinted as a blog with kind permission of…
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Family planning and safe, legal abortion go hand in hand
Marge Berer Editor, Reproductive Health Matters One in three women in the UK will have an abortion in her lifetime, most of whom will have been using contraception of some kind. Yet since as long ago as the late 1930s, there has been a split in the UK between those who insisted on promoting contraception…
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The morning after: the beginnings of an assessment of the FP Summit
Marge Berer Editor, Reproductive Health Matters 13 July 2012 From a communications point of view, the FP Summit was a raving success. Newspapers, TV and radio all over the world covered it. Around the globe everyone reached by the media heard how wonderful family planning is and how neglected it has been, the Lancet launched…
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All I had to do was take a pill every day, I was told, and hey presto, I didn’t have to worry about getting pregnant!
Marge Berer, Editor, Reproductive Health Matters I was among the first generation of women in the 1960s to experience the miracle of the pill just at the age when I was wanting to start having sex. All I had to do was take a pill every day, I was told, and hey presto, I didn’t…
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Trends in maternal mortality 1990-2010: latest data
by Marge Berer Editor Reproductive Health Matters Thanks to the Millennium Development Goals and much work on the part of the UN, WHO, many governments and NGOs globally and nationally, the press and media are now highly attuned to what is happening as regards maternal mortality. An announcement by WHO on behalf of the United…
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An unholy alliance: religion, neo-liberal economics and good old fashioned patriarchy – restricting women’s abortion rights in Eastern Europe
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A report from guest blogger Charlotte Gage on ‘How much does abortion cost?’ a session organised by ASTRA Central and Eastern European Women’s Network for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights at the AWID Forum in Istanbul. I attended this session where speakers from Poland, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia outlined the economic dimension of sexual…
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‘The death of a woman due to pregnancy complications is not only a biological fact; it is also a political choice.’1
In 2008 UK spending on Mother’s Day gifts may have amounted to as much as UK£1.6bn, while last year it was estimated that consumers in the United States would spend as much as US$16bn. This contrasts sharply with spending on basic life-saving care for mothers in much of the global south – with some countries…
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In defence of abortion on a woman’s request, including on grounds of fetal sex
Published on the British Medical Journal Guest Blog, 24th February 2012 Ach, what a furore. The Daily Telegraph is in its element and having a ball printing nasty allegations about doctors doing abortions illegally on grounds of sex selection. Let’s look at the issues a bit more dispassionately. First, is it actually illegal? Yes and…
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Independent abortion counselling? Whose problem?
Published on the BMJ guest blog, 1st September 2011 Nadine Dorries MP is a very skillful politician. She decides there is a problem, for which she has absolutely no evidence. She not only manages to get her problem onto the front pages of the newspapers but also onto the agenda of the House of Commons.…
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Why is abortion – and particularly repeat abortion – still perceived as a problem?
A study of repeat teenage pregnancies in women under 20 years old presenting for an abortion in England and Wales from 1991-2007 found that the number of women with recorded previous pregnancies had risen steadily from 1991 to 2007, both in absolute numbers and in proportion. The proportion of those who had a repeat abortion…