Category: Women
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Limitations of global estimates of maternal mortality – Nepal
The latest United Nations publication on global estimates of maternal mortality was released in May this year. Some of the news from this report is good, that despite big regional variations, overall maternal mortality is reducing at a global level. One limitation of the estimates is that they fail to shine a light on the…
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Maternal health: hospital delivery does not guarantee good care
Hospital delivery does not guarantee good care: recent cases of women who died in a referral hospital in a sub-Saharan African country Published on the British Medical Journal Guest Blog, 17 May 2012 A key focus of work in the field of safe motherhood has been on increasing deliveries in medical facilities with access to…
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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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Hormonal contraception and risk of HIV: new studies, the issues, and the response of the World Health Organization
Many feminists, including me, actively opposed the hormonal injectable contraceptive Depo Provera (DMPA) three decades ago ̶ it was at a time when certain women weren’t being given a choice of method or any information about possible side effects, and before long-term post-marketing studies began to be done to monitor long-term safety. Here in the…
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Jingle pills indeed
This post first appeared on the BMJ Group Blog, 12th December 2011 Many years ago now, when news of female sterilisation first came out, Catholic priests in Puerto Rico and other Catholic countries preached from their pulpits against women being sterilised. As a result many more women learned that sterilisation existed, and many went out…
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International Women’s Day: what happened
I want to acknowledge the many demonstrations that took place on International Women’s Day last week around the world, which were reported after my last blog. That includes: i) a brave women’s demonstration in Côte d’Ivoire commemorating the killing of seven people the week before by voted-down president Gbagbo’s troops. Those seven were themselves marching…
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International Women’s Day
Today is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day! Congratulations to all the women of the world – for their activism, their strength, their persistence, and for surviving to live another day. We women have a lot to celebrate. If we look at the condition of women 100 years ago, we could say we’ve never…