By Amelie Kolandt, Susanne Michl & Mirjam Faissner In Germany, access to abortion remains legally restricted and structurally constrained. Our recent qualitative study “Understanding structural barriers to abortion care under the counselling regulation in Germany”, published in BMJ Sexual and Reproductive Health, highlights how criminalisation, stigma, and a lack of training undermine equitable, patient-centred abortion […]
Category: screening
Trump’s isolationism between abortion, equality and shame
By Ezio di Nucci The British Medical Journal accuses Trump of waging war against equality (1). Why has equality become such cheap political prey? The answer to this question might end up implicating ourselves. Trump’s decisive political insight has always been, we argue, that basic normative principles such as equality can never be put away […]
On being left alone, finally
By Ezio Di Nucci Imagine being a woman living under the patriarchy for 45 to 50 years. Then, slowly but surely, men finally begin to leave you alone. Wouldn’t that be liberating? Reclaiming menopause as the long-awaited (genotypically and phenotypically) women’s liberation has been in high fashion of late, so I was surprised when one of […]
Letting Patients Lead: Improving How We Care for OBGYN Patients in Pain
By India Rogers-Shepp & Deepti Divya Gopisetty MD Images of patients biting their lips, fists clenched, eyes squeezed shut while they fight gasps of pain, follow us into the exam room. As trainees in gynecology, we are taught to use “verbi-caine” – words as a form of anesthesia – to ease the anxiety that too often […]
Sleepraping or: are men in the habit of raping women?
By Ezio Di Nucci Just as the patriarchy always finds novel (and often surprising) ways of oppressing women, men appear to have the uncanny ability to continue to find new ways of raping them. Sleepraping or, as it is sometimes called – but shouldn’t be – sexsomnia is men using a sleepwalking defense in rape […]
Recommending Privately Developed FemTech in Healthcare Part 2: Understanding Healthcare Professionals’ Responsibilities
By Anna Nelson, Maria Tzanou and Tsachi Keren-Paz In the previous blog, we introduced the issues associated with healthcare professionals (HCPs) recommending privately-developed FemTech apps. In this second blog, we turn our attention to regulatory considerations associated with this practice. There are two distinct questions which could be asked here: (1) whether HCPs should recommend […]
Recommending Privately-Developed FemTech in Healthcare Part 1: Promises and Pitfalls
By Anna Nelson, Maria Tzanou and Tsachi Keren-Paz Introduction FemTech refers to apps and wearable devices (eg. smart breast pumps and bluetooth-enabled fertility monitors) purporting to empower women and non-binary users to manage their sexual, gynaecological and reproductive health. During their recent review of the data practices of period and fertility tracking apps, the […]
Creating a consolidated EMAH (Early Medical Abortion at Home) medication pack: What has the impact been?
By Nathan Burley Background Up to seven medicines are provided for an early medical abortion, similar to the amount supplied after a heart attack. Abortifacients, analgesia, an anti-emetic, contraception and an antibiotic could be supplied, with each attendance resulting in at least four packs being given. Clinics providing this service may store a variety […]
Defending the use of the term ‘obstetric violence’
By Ezio Di Nucci Here I defend ’obstetric violence’: not the practice, but its name – and more generally the idea that some obstetric practices deserve to be called acts of violence, contrary to what has recently been argued. This question is relevant beyond sexual and reproductive health: what is at stake is the very […]
Application of a novel abortion care quality measurement tool (ACQTool) in Bangladesh
By Laura E Jacobson, Sarah E. Baum, Erin Pearson, Rezwana Chowdhury, Nirali M. Chakraborty, Julia M. Goodman, Caitlin Gerdts, & Blair G. Darney Measuring and improving quality of care is an essential part of ensuring safe and effective health services; however, until recently measuring the quality of abortion care has been hampered by a lack of shared definitions […]