Malta – Science should guide all our health policies… including abortion

Science should guide all our health policies... including abortion
Our total abortion ban is no less dangerous or unhinged (or even idiotic, for that matter) than Donald Trump’s notorious recommendation to ‘drink bleach’ as an antidote to COVID-19

Raphael Vassallo
5 May 2020

I guess it had to take a major global health emergency to make us finally understand what should really have been obvious all along. Yes, Dr Fearne: our national policies should be based on scientific advice... and not on popular opinion, electoral concerns, or (still less) the demands of powerful lobby groups.

It is, in fact, thanks to the health authorities’ science-based approach that Malta has so far been spared the nightmare scenarios we have seen unfolding almost everywhere else in the world. As Fearne himself put it last Friday: “We are in today’s positive situation because from the very beginning we abided by what science was telling us, and what the numbers were suggesting.”

Continued: https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/comment/blogs/102116/science_should_guide_all_our_health_policies_including_abortion#.XrLpuMB7lPY

UK – Like Everything Else, Abortion Needs To Change After This

Like Everything Else, Abortion Needs To Change After This

Vicky Spratt
16 April 2020

Was the Health Secretary Matt Hancock gaslighting women in Britain when he allowed draft legislation permitting at-home abortions during the pandemic we’re currently living through to be published and unpublished? We will never know.

In the end, because of a cacophonous campaign from abortion experts at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and Marie Stopes, the government did a u-turn and confirmed that, for as long as this crisis rages on, women will be able to take abortion medication in the safety and comfort of their own home after a telephone consultation with a doctor (also known as telemedicine).

Continued: https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2020/04/9700087/abortion-law-change-during-coronavirus

UK – State control over women’s bodies is an unforeseen outcome of the coronavirus crisis

State control over women's bodies is an unforeseen outcome of the coronavirus crisis
A U-turn on women’s ability to access home abortions and the cancellation of IVF means they have less say over their fertility

Emma Barnett
Sun 29 Mar 2020

It’s been quite a week to have a womb in the UK.

First, pregnant women were suddenly categorised as vulnerable, and advised to stay home by the government. But then some of them were told to come back into work by their employers – including the riskiest of all, the NHS.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/29/state-control-womens-bodies-covid-19-crisis

N. Ireland – Abortion: Health bodies want laws for ‘safe and compassionate’ care

Abortion: Health bodies want laws for 'safe and compassionate' care

By Marie-Louise Connolly, BBC News NI Health Correspondent
Feb 5, 2029

Health bodies have recommended a legal framework be set up to "prioritise safe and compassionate abortion care" in NI.

They include the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), the Royal College of Midwives and the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare.

The groups agree there should be no abortion restrictions up to 24 weeks.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-51379331

05.02.2020

Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare

Karen Murray

RCOG

Royal College of Midwives

Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

travelling for abortion

UK – Women should be allowed to take abortion pills at home, doctors say

Women should be allowed to take abortion pills at home, doctors say
Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says change could improve the accessibility of early medical abortion care for women

Sarah Young
Dec 1, 2019

Women should be allowed to take abortion pills from the comfort of their own home and without seeing a doctor face-to-face, leading doctors have said.

As part a new report titled “Better for Women”, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) has called on the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to reconsider its guidelines regarding medical abortions.

Continued: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/abortion-pills-home-planned-parenthood-pregnancy-termination-a9228466.html

UK – RCOG launches “Better for Women” report

RCOG launches “Better for Women” report
UK women facing widespread barriers to essential healthcare services

RCOG News,
29 November 2019

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) is calling for better joined up services, as part of its “Better for Women” report, published today. It emphasises the need for national strategies to meet the needs of girls and women across their life course – from adolescence, to the middle years and later life.

There should also be greater focus on moving the UK away from providing a disease intervention service towards a preventative health service, says the report.

Continued; https://www.rcog.org.uk/en/news/rcog-launches-better-for-women-report/

RCOG response to latest abortion statistics in England and Wales

RCOG response to latest abortion statistics in England and Wales

News 13 June 2019

The Department of Health and Social Care published statistics today which show the number of abortions carried out in England and Wales is at its highest level.

There were 200,608 abortions in 2018, an increase of 4% on the previous year.

Overall, abortion rates have increased in the last decade for all women over the age of 25. Less than half (48%) of abortions were to women who had already had one or more previous births.

Continued: https://www.rcog.org.uk/en/news/rcog-response-to-latest-abortion-statistics-in-england-and-wales/

13.06.2019

Featured

News

abortion statistics

Department of Health and Social Care

Lesley Regan

RCOG

Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

unmet need for contraception

Born Alive Abortion Survivors: Parsing Fact from Fiction

Born Alive Abortion Survivors: Parsing Fact from Fiction

March 11, 2019
by Libby Anne

Last week, a friend sent me an article bearing the headline They Are Real: Meet Born-Alive Abortion Survivors. Could I maybe blog about it, she asked? This article led me down to a rabbit hole with numbers that kept getting bigger. When I reached an article that argued that there are 44,000 abortion survivors living in the U.S. today, I knew we had a definitional problem. What is really going on here?

The article my friend sent me profiled five individuals it labeled “abortion survivors.” These individuals are real people. The first one profiled Gianna Jesson, whose mother had a saline abortion at 30 weeks in 1977, and Gianna survived. When she was born alive, she was provided with care and given up for adoption. Melissa Ohden’s biological mother had a saline abortion at 31 weeks in 1977; she, too, survived and was provided care.

Continued: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2019/03/born-alive-abortion-survivors-parsing-fact-from-fiction.html

Use of second abortion pill at home to be allowed in England

Use of second abortion pill at home to be allowed in England
Government says home use of misoprostol will be legalised by end of 2018

Haroon Siddique
Sat 25 Aug 2018

Women in England are to be allowed to take the second abortion pill at home, giving them the same rights as their counterparts in Scotland and Wales.

The UK government announced on Saturday that it would legalise the home use of early medical abortion drugs by the end of the year. It comes after pressure from campaigners for England to follow in the footsteps of Scotland, which last year became the first part of the UK to introduce the option, and Wales, which announced its own plans in June.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/25/use-of-second-abortion-pill-at-home-to-be-allowed-in-england

Prime Minister & Trump urged to discuss sexual healthcare by RCOG & FSRH

Prime Minister & Trump urged to discuss sexual healthcare by RCOG & FSRH

By Hannah Alderton
July 13, 2018

Presidents of key organisations supporting the rights of women and girls across the world are calling on Theresa May to raise the crucial issue of sexual and reproductive health with the US President Donald Trump during their bilateral talks.

In a joint letter, Professor Lesley Regan, President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), and Dr Asha Kasliwal, President of the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (FSRH), write:

Continued: https://www.pharmafield.co.uk/pharma_news/rcog-fsrh-prime-minister-sexual-healthcare-trump/