Ep 4. Abortion Care

This week’s podcast is on the future of abortion care and how it should look in 2021. For it, I’m joined by Katherine O’Brien, Associate Director of Communications and Campaigns at BPAS. Katherine has a wealth of knowledge and expertise having worked at BPAS for 10 years and has led on a variety of campaigns to improve abortion access and reproductive healthcare across the UK. 

One of the things that stayed with me from the conversation was the fact that it is medically possible for women and gender-diverse people to only take one pill a month for contraception but due to archaic abortion laws in the UK, we are being denied this option. It is a microcosm of how abortion care is set up in the UK - we could be doing it better but some arbitrary barrier is getting in the way. 

Visions for the future of abortion care

📆Taking time off for an abortion, like you would for a dentist appointment

🩺 Choices around contraceptives being made in the interest of the patient, rather than availability or funding

⚖️ Laws that mean someone having an abortion is the sole person to decide whether they should have one or not

What you can do

✍️ Respond to the government’s consultation on home use of both pill for early medical abortion: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/home-use-of-both-pills-for-early-medical-abortion 

* Open until 26th Feb 2020

*Anti-abortion advocates are really good at shouting the loudest when it comes to these things so if you feel like you can have your voice heard on this, please do!

💵 Donate to abortion rights charities - if you can, money is the best resource to ensure reproductive health rights are here to stay

*I’m a huge fan of Women on Web but there are many others including Abortion Support Network and Abortion Rights UK who do amazing work.

⚤ Check out the work of BPAS who have ongoing campaigns https://www.bpas.org/get-involved/campaigns/