Meet the presenters

• Kerry Abel
  Kerry Abel is the Chair of the Abortion Rights campaign which campaigns to defend and extend a woman's right to choose. She has promoted the campaign in the media, including appearing on Sky News and BBC's Newsnight. She has worked in the trade union movement for over ten years as a union organiser.
• Barbara Baird

  Barbara Baird works in the Discipline of Women’s Studies at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia. Her research uses feminist and other critical theories in interdisciplinary approaches and focuses on the histories and cultural politics of sexuality and reproduction in Australia and the shaping of these by discourses... (Read more)

• David Tennent Baird CBE. BA (Cantab), MD, DSc...

  Emeritus Professor University of Edinburgh, MRC Centre for Reproductive Health: Honorary Consultant Gynaecologist, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Educated at the Universities of Aberdeen, Cambridge and Edinburgh before post graduate training in endocrinology, obstetrics and gynaecology in Edinburgh... (Read more)

• Marge Berer

  Marge Berer has been the Coordinator of the International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion since mid-2015. She founded and was the editor of the journal Reproductive Health Matters (October 1992-April 2015). She was a co-founder and Steering Committee chair of the International Consortium for Medical... (Read more)

• Barbara Brookes

  Barbara Brookes is Professor of History at the University of Otago whose research, writing and teaching have contributed significantly to new perspectives on women's history. Her first book, from her PhD thesis undertaken at Bryn Mawr College, Abortion in England, 1900-1967, (1988, reissued by Routledge in 2013)... (Read more)

• Juliet Cheetham

  When appointed to the Lane Committee, Juliet Cheetham was a Lecturer in Applied Social Studies at Oxford University. Before that she was a probation officer. While the Committee was sitting she had her second child - an event that seemed to provoke some people who were very against abortion. The work of the... (Read more)

• Dilys Cossey

  Dilys Cossey was secretary of the Abortion Law Reform Association from 1964-68, a member of the team which worked to reform the abortion law. For the rest of her working life, she remained active in the reproductive health, family planning and population field and played leading roles in campaigns for free NHS... (Read more)

• Gayle Davis

  Gayle Davis is a Senior Lecturer in the history of medicine at the University of Edinburgh. She has published extensively on the social history of medicine in Britain since 1880, with a particular focus upon reproductive health (abortion, contraception, infertility and stillbirth). Her recent Wellcome Trust University award on the... (Read more)

• Bernard Dickens

  Bernard Dickens is Professor Emeritus of Health Law and Policy in the Faculty of Law, Faculty of Medicine and the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto. He was born in England, and graduated at King’s College in the University of London, holding the degrees of Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.), Master of Laws (LL.M.)... (Read more)

• Joanna N. Erdman

  Joanna N. Erdman is an Associate Professor and the inaugural MacBain Chair in Health Law and Policy at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia. She is also the Associate Director of the school’s Health Law Institute. Joanna’s research focuses on sexual and reproductive health and human rights in a... (Read more)

• Joanne Fletcher

  Joanne Fletcher, Consultant Nurse Gynaecology, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Qualified as a Registered Nurse in 1988 and in 1993 was appointed to the first Nurse Practitioner post in the UK to develop and manage a nurse-led abortion service. She qualified as a sonographer in 1999 and was appointed... (Read more)

• Ann Furedi

  Ann Furedi runs the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (bpas), which provides abortions to about 65,000 women a year in England & Wales. Most of these are provided free to women and paid for by NHS. Women travelling from Ireland need to self-fund, but bpas has a policy of never turning any woman away that it can safely and... (Read more)

• Anna Glasier

  Anna Glasier trained in O&G, became a clinical scientist in the MRC Unit of Reproductive Biology in Edinburgh and then Director of Family Planning & Well Woman Services for Lothian until 2010. She is an Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Edinburgh University. Her research is... (Read more)

• Sir Denis Pereira Gray

  Sir Denis Pereira Gray worked as a general practitioner for 38 years in the St Leonard’s Medical Practice Exeter, following his father and grandfather. He has been awarded the gold medal of the Hunterian Society, London, the gold medal of the Royal Institute of Public Health, and honorary doctorates by three British universities. (Read more)

• Megan Griffiths

  Megan Griffiths is a recently qualified consultant in Sexual and Reproductive Health(SRH), currently on maternity leave prior to taking up a consultant post in Devon early next year. She initially trained in O&G achieving Membership of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 2011. She has subsequently moved... (Read more)

• Lisa Hallgarten

  Lisa Hallgarten is a campaigner, writer, trainer, and educator working in sexual and reproductive health and rights. In her work at Education for Choice, Reproductive Health Matters, the Sex Education Forum and currenty as Policy Manager at Brook her focus has been on translating evidence into good practice, with a focus on... (Read more)

• Keith Hindell

  Keith Hindell is the author of the book 'Abortion Law Reformed' (with Madeleine Simms). He was a director of Pregnancy Advisory Service from 1970-79. Keith has been a programme editor and foreign correspondent for the BBC.

• Leah Hoctor

  Leah Hoctor is the Regional Director for Europe at the Center for Reproductive Rights where she leads the Center’s Europe Program and directs the Center’s litigation, advocacy and policy work in Europe. Before her work with the Center, Leah was a Senior Legal Advisor with the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), where... (Read more)

• Goretti Horgan

  Goretti Horgan is a lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Ulster, a member of the Institute for Research in Social Sciences and Deputy Director of ARK’s Policy Unit. ARK is a joint University of Ulster/Queen’s University, which aims to promote evidence-based policy making and to help researchers, policy-makers, and the wider... (Read more)

• Kinga Jelinska

  Kinga Jelinska is a cultural anthropologist specialized in film and new media. Born and educated in Warsaw, Poland, lived in Amsterdam since 2004. Kinga is a co-founder and the Executive Director of Women Help Women (womenhelp.org) - a telemedicine service for medical abortion and contraception working with... (Read more)

• Diana Johnson

  Diana Johnson is the Labour Member of Parliament for Hull North, and was first elected in 2005. On 13th March 2017, she tabled a Parliamentary Bill to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales, where she called for a review of Britain’s abortion laws fifty years after the passage of the Abortion Act. The Bill was passed by 172 votes to 142, and she has pledged to renew the campaign for women’s reproductive rights in the new Parliament.

• Ellie Lee, PhD

  Ellie Lee, PhD is Reader in Social Policy at the University of Kent. Her research and teaching draws on sociological concepts such as risk consciousness and medicalisation to analyse the evolution of family policy and health policy. Her work explores why everyday issues – for example how women feel after abortion, what they... (Read more)

• Patricia A. Lohr, FACOG FFSRH (Hons)

  Dr. Lohr completed her medical education at the University of Southern California and trained in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Los Angeles County-Harbor UCLA Medical Center. This was followed by a Fellowship in Family Planning & Contraceptive Research at the University of Pittsburgh during which she was also... (Read more)

• Tracey Masters, FRCOG, FFSRH, DIPM

  Since 2012 Dr Tracey Masters has worked as a Consultant in Sexual and Reproductive Health Care at the Homerton University Hospital NHS FT and is proud to lead its abortion service, and be part of the Homerton Sexual Health team serving the diverse population of Hackney in East London. Tracey trained in London... (Read more)

• Sheelagh McGuinness

  Sheelagh McGuinness is Senior Lecturer in law at the University of Bristol. Her research interests include the regulation of reproduction, and health law more generally. Sheelagh is currently working on an ESRC-funded project examining issues of reproductive loss. Her public service roles include being a member of the... (Read more)

• Jenny Morgan

  Jenny Morgan is a professor at Melbourne Law School, the University of Melbourne, where she was Deputy Dean for four years. She is the co-author (with Reg Graycar) of The Hidden Gender of Law, the first edition of which was published in 1990 (and the second in 2002). She has published work on sexual harassment, homicide... (Read more)

• Diane Munday

  Diane Munday was a key member of the Abortion Law Reform Association from 1962 until 1974. Initially, she filled the roles of vice chairman and main spokesperson until, in 1968, she became the pressure group’s General Secretary. In 1974 she moved to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (the charity which she had... (Read more)

• Clare Murphy

  Clare Murphy is director ‎of external affairs at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, having joined the charity in 2010. Prior to that, she worked as a health reporter for the BBC. Clare has an absolute commitment to campaigning for women's access to the reproductive health services they need and the removal of legal... (Read more)

• The Rt Hon the Lord David Owen CH.

  David Owen was a Member of Parliament for Plymouth for 26 years from 1966-92. Under Labour Governments, he served as Navy Minister, Health Minister and Foreign Secretary. He was co-founder of the Social Democratic Party established in 1981 and its Leader from 1983-87 and 1988-90. He currently sits in the House... (Read more)

• John Parsons

  John Parsons qualified in medicine from the University of Dundee, Scotland in 1970. After house officer appointments in the National Health Service, he worked for the Ministry of Overseas Development as a general medical officer in Malawi, Central Africa for three years. During this period he observed first hand the risks... (Read more)

• Carrie Purcell, PhD

  Carrie Purcell, PhD is a Research Associate at the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow. With a background in sociology, Carrie’s research interests span sexual and reproductive health, abortion, young people, embodiment, stigma, experiences of health professionals, and access to... (Read more)

• Sean Rees

  Sean is fifth year medical student at UCL. While at medical school he has been involved in a number of projects that aim to engage students in a range of equalities issues that include women’s sexual and reproductive health, the rights of LGBT+ people and widening-access to medicine... (Read more)

• Wendy Savage

  Wendy Savage was born in South London in 1935. Educated at Croydon High School for Girls and Girton College, Cambridge, she started her clinical training at the London Hospital Medical College in the East End of London in 1957. Qualified from Cambridge and the London Hospital Medical College in 1960. Worked... (Read more)

• Sally Sheldon

  Sally Sheldon is a Professor of Law at the University of Kent, where she researches in the area of healthcare ethics and law. She has recently completed one AHRC-funded project on the challenges raised for law by medical abortion and is currently working on another, which aims to offer a biography of the Abortion Act (1967). (Read more)

• Allan Templeton

  Allan Templeton is Professor Emeritus of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Aberdeen. He was President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists 2004-2007, clinical director of the RCOG office for Research and Audit 2008-2014, and now edits EBCOG (European College) public health statements. (Read more)

• Michael Thomson

  Michael Thomson is Professor of Health Law at the University of Leeds where he is also the Director of the Centre for Law & Social Justice. His research explores children’s rights, the role of the medical profession in the regulation of abortion, and health justice. His current research explores the shaping of children’s bodies and when we... (Read more)

• Caroline Woodroffe
  Caroline Woodroffe is an epidemiologist, public health specialist and contraception campaigner. She has formerly been a commissioner at the Equal Opportunities Commission, a Chair of the Birth Control Trust and Maternity Alliance and CEO of Brook Advisory Centres 1970-86, and Director of the Wolfson Child Health Monitoring Unit at the Institute of Child Health (London).