Transformed expectations of women's roles, along with attrition to binary and hetero-cis-normative understandings of gender and sexuality, and developments in biological capabilities, drive an increasingly complex politics of sex and reproduction. This book explores the UK's modern regulatory conundrums of adolescent sexual health, abortion and assisted reproductive technologies (ART), and identifies power and influential interactions within the health policy network that shape outcomes in this area. It suggests that assumed medial monopoly over these issues is actually superseded by government calculation of cost-effectiveness, with ministerial determination of programmes and levels of access conducted against a backdrop of historical legislative association with traditional family formation. This relationship dominates the landscape, with the service user's voice continually repressed and limited to individual cases of conflict. Unable to meaningfully inform sector decisions, therefore, the outcome is unsurprisingly the marginalisation of women in publicly funded healthcare, but with a clear further impact on sex and gender minorities. COVID-19 has disrupted these dynamics, however, altering the manner in which previously inhibited patients engage with the NHS, and often increasing their autonomy through schemes such as Early Medical Abortion at Home (EMAH). As the pandemic recedes, it thus becomes timely to consider the future of gendered healthcare in the UK and question the likelihood of long term change in the ability of the patient to inform health policy decisions. The book will appeal to gender and health public policy scholars, healthcare practitioners, and law and politics students.

Sarah Cooper is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Exeter, UK.