This book explores regulatory conundrums around adolescent sexual health, abortion and assisted reproductive technologies in the UK. In doing so, it seeks to examine the various stages at which women’s reproductive health comes into contact with government action and assesses how these legal and policy fields are shaped through the conceptual lens of policy networks. Transformed expectations of women’s roles, along with developed biological capabilities and understandings of gender and sexuality have driven an increasingly complex politics of sex and reproduction. The book argues that assumed medial control over these issues is overshadowed by government calculations of cost-effectiveness. Moreover, decisions on the design of programmes and levels of access continually reflect traditional family formation. The outcome is unsurprisingly the marginalisation of women in publicly funded healthcare, but with a clear further impact on gender and sex minorities. COVID-19 has disrupted these dynamics further, altering the manner in which previously inhibited patients engage with the NHS. As the pandemic recedes it has become more timely than ever to consider the future of gendered healthcare in the UK, and to question the likelihood of long term change in the ability of patients to inform health policy decisions. The book will appeal to scholars and students of gender and health policy, law and politics, as well as healthcare practitioners.
Author(s): Sarah Cooper
Series: Palgrave Studies in Public Health Policy Research
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 255
City: Cham
Contents
1 The Politics of Sex and Reproduction
Inclusivity in ‘Women’s Health’
Analysing Gender in Healthcare
How is Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare Provided in the UK?
How Have These Decisions Been Shaped in the Healthcare Community?
What Has Been the Impact of COVID-19 on Gendered Healthcare?
Structure of the Book
References
2 Understanding Outcomes
Beyond Binary Service Delivery
Structural Adaptations
Dominant
Challenging
Repressed
Shaping Outcomes
Conclusion
References
3 Sexual Health
Sex Education
Priming Cost-Effectiveness
Uptake, Lockdown and the ‘Other’ Vaccine
Conclusion
References
4 Abortion
Clinical Control of Patient Experience
The Distrusting Minister
Pandemic Pills by Post
Conclusion
References
5 Assisted Reproductive Technologies
Legislating Infertility
Commissioning Motherhood
The Pandemic Pause
Conclusion
References
6 The Future of Gender-Related Healthcare
A Wider Analytical Toolkit
Strategies for Success
The Corona Context
Conclusion
References
Index
