Nice approves Keytruda, which with chemotherapy can lengthen survival of women with triple negative breast cancer
Women with advanced breast cancer in England will be able to benefit from a new type of immunotherapy on the NHS after a U-turn by the medicines watchdog.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) has overturned its draft rejection of Keytruda (pembrolizumab) and said women in England can take the drug in combination with chemotherapy.
Continue reading...#FreeHerFace campaign gathers force as high-profile men rebel against crackdown on face coverings in Afghanistan
Male TV presenters in Afghanistan are wearing face masks on screen to show solidarity after the Taliban issued an order that all women on news channels must cover their faces.
In a protest dubbed #FreeHerFace on social media, men on Tolo News wore masks to mimic the effect of the face veil their female colleagues have been forced to wear after a Taliban crackdown.
Continue reading...Participants in charity’s year-long inquiry describe being ignored and feeling patronised and dehumanised
Systemic racism within UK maternity care is risking the safety of people from Black, Asian and mixed ethnicity backgrounds, often with devastating consequences, according to a report by the childbirth charity Birthrights.
More than 300 people with lived and professional experience of racial injustice in a maternity setting gave evidence to an expert panel chaired by Shaheen Rahman QC, a barrister who specialises in clinical negligence, as part of the charity’s year-long inquiry into the issue.
Continue reading...Move is part of hardline pivot after militants hinted at more moderate restrictions when taking power last year
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have begun enforcing an order requiring all female TV news presenters in the country to cover their faces while on air, as part of a hardline shift that has drawn condemnation from rights activists.
After the order was announced on Thursday, only a handful of news outlets complied. However, on Sunday most female presenters were seen with their faces covered after the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice began enforcing the decree.
Continue reading...Ashley Mullenger talks about the difficulties of finding the right boots and lifejackets, and getting more women into the industry
Being a woman in the male-dominated fishing industry has presented some challenges for Ashley Mullenger, who has become the first woman to win a Fisherman of the Year award.
“It’s little things like the ankle cut on the boots we wear – for men it’s wider and you need to have good ankle support on a boat when you’re working on a moving deck. It took me a while to find boots suitable for commercial fishing and for women,” she says.
Continue reading...US transportation secretary says supreme court’s ruling could determine future generations’ freedoms
Pete Buttigieg, the US transportation secretary and the first openly gay member of a US administration, has expressed his worry that the expected overturning by the supreme court of the 1973 landmark decision which made abortion legal, may be the start of a series of eliminations of other groundbreaking rights and protections.
Earlier this month a leaked document showed that five conservatives on the nine-justice supreme court had voted to reverse their predecessors’ ruling in Roe v Wade nearly 50 years ago. The provisional ruling could lead to abortion being outlawed in more than half of US states unless it is changed substantially before becoming final.
Continue reading...A nine-year-old pointed out what was missing in Lyme Regis. Her long campaign has now borne fruit
It all began with a curious nine-year-old and a question that she asked her mother. Where in their hometown of Lyme Regis was the statue of Mary Anning, the pioneering Victorian fossil hunter who, she had recently discovered, had lived and worked there?
There wasn’t one, Anya Pearson was forced to tell her indignant daughter. Anning’s lifetime of discoveries – including finding the first ichthyosaur skeleton at the age of just 12 – may have profoundly shaped the emerging science of palaeontology, but in her own Dorset town and farther afield, she had been largely forgotten.
Continue reading...Female anchors post pictures of themselves being ‘erased’ on orders of virtue and vice ministry
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have ordered all female TV presenters to cover their faces on air, the country’s biggest media outlet has said.
The order came in a statement from the Taliban’s virtue and vice ministry, tasked with enforcing the group’s rulings, as well as from the information and culture ministry, the Tolo news channel tweeted on Thursday. The statement called the order “final and non-negotiable”, the channel said.
Continue reading...If Roe v Wade is overturned, it will encourage anti-choice groups – particularly in the developing world, activists warn
The probable demise of abortion as a federal right in the US will be a “catastrophe” for women in low and middle-income countries, with an emboldened anti-choice movement likely to raise renewed pressure on hard-won gains, doctors and activists have warned.
The leak this month of the US supreme court’s draft majority opinion, which argued that the 1973 ruling effectively legalising abortion had been “egregiously wrong from the start”, stunned and enraged many in America.
Continue reading...Ex-firearms officer Rhona Malone, awarded nearly £1m for sexist victimisation, says pain and sacrifices outweigh any compensation
A former armed response officer awarded nearly £1m by Police Scotland over victimisation said the past few years had been “torturous” and no amount of compensation could make up for the pain experienced.
Rhona Malone began her action against the force after a senior police officer said he did not want to see two female armed officers deployed together when there were sufficient male staff on duty.
Continue reading...Babis Anagnostopoulos spent 10 chilling hours in an Athens courts calmly describing the murder of his wife
Last week, Greek helicopter pilot Babis Anagnostopoulos stood in the dock of an Athens court and related the circumstances that led him to suffocate his British wife. Over the course of 10 hours he barely paused. Coolly and calmly, from 10am to 8pm, he addressed the tribunal.
He recalled the dream life he had shared with the woman whom he would go on to asphyxiate; his decision to choke her beloved puppy, Roxy, hanging the pet dog from the banister of the couple’s maisonette; his love for his baby daughter, whom he would place next to her dead mother’s body; and his determination in a moment “of chaos” to cover up the killing as a robbery gone terribly wrong.
Continue reading...Amanda Blanc says sexism in business has actually got worse after being told she is ‘not the man for the job’
The chief executive of the insurer Aviva has hit out at sexism in the industry, saying “unacceptable behaviour” has only increased since she took more senior roles in the sector.
Amanda Blanc, who became the company’s first female chief executive in 2020, published a LinkedIn post thanking people for their support after shareholders made sexist remarks at the company’s annual general meeting on Monday. Investors said Blanc was “not the man for the job” and should be “wearing trousers”.
Continue reading...Women say they fear going out in public despite Taliban vow to respect hard-won rights after 2021 takeover
Despite everything that has happened to her country since the Taliban seized power last August, 29-year old Nafisa still never believed there would come a day when she would be unable to feel the sun on her face as she walked the streets of Kabul.
Yet on Saturday, the Taliban’s sinisterly named ministry for the propagation of virtue ordered that Nafisa, along with millions of women across Afghanistan, should ideally not leave the house at all. If they do, they must be fully veiled and never show their faces in public.
Continue reading...Giandomenico Iannetti, a pain expert at UCL, angrily denies that his research suggests foetuses can feel pain before 24 weeks
A University College London scientist has accused lawyers in the US of misusing his groundbreaking work on the brain to justify the dismantling of Roe v Wade, the landmark ruling that legalised abortion nationally in America.
Giandomenico Iannetti said his research, which used imaging to understand the adult brain’s response to pain, had been wrongly interpreted to make an anti-abortion argument.
Continue reading...Veteran activists say the overthrow of Roe v Wade would equate to murder, and should send warning signals around the world
It was over the Thanksgiving holiday, catching up with old high school friends, that Frances Beal heard that Cordelia had died. Like the now 82-year-old Black feminist and activist, her friend had left home to go to college, but she didn’t make it through her first year because, like anybody who wanted to terminate a pregnancy in America in 1958, she had been forced to undergo a backstreet abortion.
“She was dead because she’d had an illegal abortion. And it had gone bad. And if you take a look at the statistics, the number of woman that died from illegal abortions was tremendous,” Beal, who later joined the movement to legalise abortion, told the Observer.
Continue reading...SNP urged to act by Scottish Labour and campaigners as fears grow threat to Roe v Wade in US could embolden anti-choice movement
The Scottish government is facing growing calls to impose buffer zones around abortion clinics amid fears that potential changes to abortion rights in the US are emboldening anti-choice protesters.
A leaked US draft supreme court ruling overturning Roe v Wade has sharpened anxieties over delays in implementing the SNP’s 2021 manifesto pledge to support local authorities to establish protest-free zones around clinics.
Continue reading...Davina McCall documentary highlights benefits and postcode lottery of previously rejected utrogestan
A sought-after hormone replacement therapy is being reassessed for use in Scotland after TV presenter and menopause campaigner Davina McCall revealed a postcode lottery in its prescription across the UK.
Amid an ongoing supply crisis of HRT products, McCall spoke to specialists about the benefits of utrogestan, a “body identical” micronised progesterone, which is derived from plants, in her Channel 4 documentary Sex, Mind and Menopause, broadcast on Monday.
Continue reading...A leaked supreme court draft ruling shows the US is set to end 50 years of a woman’s right to choose. Elsewhere, the battle still rages
In 2022, abortion remains one of the most controversial and bitterly contested ethical and political battlegrounds. It is illegal for women to terminate their pregnancies in any circumstance in 24 countries, with a further 37 restricting access in any case except when the mother’s life is in danger.
As a leaked document signals that the US supreme court is poised to strike down the landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v Wade, millions of American women face losing their access to legal abortions, joining millions more living in those countries rejecting a woman’s right to choose.
Continue reading...Leaked initial draft majority opinion suggests court is poised to overturn ruling that legalised abortion across US
A leaked initial draft majority opinion suggests the US supreme court is poised to overturn the Roe v Wade decision that legalised abortion nationwide, Politico reported on Monday.
The unprecedented leak stunned Washington. It holds the potential to reshape the political landscape ahead of US midterm elections in November. Following is some reaction to the report:
Continue reading...In an unprecedented revelation, a document written by Justice Samuel Alito says ‘Roe was egregiously wrong from the start’
The US supreme court has provisionally voted to overturn Roe v Wade, the landmark ruling that legalised abortion nationwide in America, according to a draft opinion reported on by Politico.
In what appeared to be a stunning and unprecedented leak, Politico said on Monday evening it had obtained an initial majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito and circulated in the court on 10 February.
Continue reading...