Breaking siloes: Abortion beyond the clinic

Tee (aka Tom) works as a sexual health doctor and abortion provider in Homerton hospital (London). They are non-binary and appreciate it if you refer to them as 'they/them'. They also study philosophy at the University of Kingston, working on a thesis on the 20th century Marxist philosopher Theodor W. Adorno.

Marin Scarlett is the founder of The Scarlett Letters, a new radical bookshop in Bethnal Green that aims to platform marginalised communities and underrepresented voices. She currently volunteers with Supporting Abortions for Everyone (SAFE) and has previously worked with Decrim Now, the European Sex Workers' Rights Alliance and National Ugly Mugs.

Dr Keio Yoshida is a human rights lawyer, barrister and author of Pride and Prejudices: Queer lives and the law (Scribe, 2025), and co-author with Jen Robinson of Silenced Women (Octopus, 2024)/How Many More Women (Allen & Unwin, 2022). Keio is currently a senior legal adviser at the Center for Reproductive Rights and an associate barrister at Doughty Street Chambers. In 2025, Keio was named as one of the top 100 LGBTQ+ trailblazers by Attitude Magazine.

Justin Hancock is a sex and relationships educator and writer with more than 25 years experience providing SRH advice to young people and adults. This includes via BISH, the award-winning SRH advice website he founded in 2009. He is also the host of the long-running 'Culture Sex Relationships' podcast.

Joe Strong (he/him) is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow with a specific interest in the politics of global health. His research centres around sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice and the role of gender, power, and data. He is on the Advisory Board of Abortion Talk and volunteers at SAFE (Supporting Abortions For Everyone). With Dr Nandagiri, he co-runs the 'abortion book club'.

@joestrong.bsky.social‬

Lucia is a British Academy International Fellow at Birmingham Law School and an Affiliated researcher of the Global Health and Rights Project at The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. Her project sits at the intersection of law, social movements and human rights and applies a socio-legal approach to explore how abortion law and regulation impact SMA practices; how SMA practices affect abortion law and regulation; how SMA practices have impacted international human rights law and global health governance. She works in close collaboration with grassroots organizations including Women Help Women and the MAMA Network, advancing legal risk mitigation, collective care strategies, and cross-border solidarity to expand access to abortion outside of clinical settings.

Rishita (she/her) is a Lecturer in the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine, King’s College London, and Visiting Fellow, Department of International Development, LSE. Rishita’s feminist interdisciplinary research focuses on gender, abortion and reproductive (in)justices in the Global Souths (broadly understood). Her recent empirical work (re) conceptualises ‘safety’ and ‘risk’ in abortion, interrogates the role of secrecy in abortion, and (re)theorises self-managed abortion as collective and as care (with Dr Berro Pizzarossa). 

From panel spotlight posts: Naomi is Co-convenor of Alliance for Choice and has been active in the campaign for decriminalisation and since then in pushing for access to legal services. Naomi is also a long-time Trade Union activist. As a woman who was forced to travel from Northern Ireland to England to access abortion services, Naomi has first hand experience of the difficulties that women and pregnant people in NI face when seeking to access abortion healthcare. She is an outspoken advocate of women’s rights and reproductive justice.

Zachi is an abortion doula, relational facilitator and creative anti-disciplinarian. In 2021 she created Dopo, a community platform providing honest and inclusive abortion care and education. She supports individuals through transitional experiences, builds communities around our shared stories and advocates for a messy revolution based on care and liberation. She is the mother of twins and many dying houseplants

Lesley is a Professor of Social Policy Research at the Open University. Her main areas of research are focused on reproductive health; abortion policy and politics; abortion stigma and contraception. She is also a co founder of Abortion Talk.

Jakki is a disability activist and a graduate of the LLM programme Gender, Conflict and Human Rights at the Transitional Justice Institute (Ulster University). She previously worked at the university providing support for students with learning difficulties or other disabilities, and is carer for her autistic daughter who also has a diagnosis of OCD and anorexia.

From panel spotlight post: Annabel is a Community Sexual & Reproductive Health Consultant, part-time PhD student & Harold Moody Scholar at King’s. She is founder of charity the Reproductive Justice Initiative (RJI) (formerly Decolonising Contraception) and author of Divided: Racism, Medicine & Why we need to decolonise healthcare.

John is a Clinical Lecturer in Community Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare at the MRC Centre for Reproductive Health, University of Edinburgh. His areas of interest are abortion care, post-abortion contraception, and male contraception.

Ayomide is a gender and health expert with a focus on low and middle-income contexts. She has solid knowledge and experience in policy research and analysis, qualitative methodologies, and systematic reviews. She has been involved in collaborations with The UN, WHO, RCOG and The Wellcome Trust

Laura has a background in policy and research and currently works for the British Medical Association, the registered trade union for doctors in the UK. Before joining the BMA, she led the policy, campaigns and research teams at Stonewall (the LGBTQ+ campaigning charity) and at the sexual and reproductive health and rights charity FPA.

Susie is Abortion Talk’s executive director. She’s been an abortion advocate for over 20 years, including time spent serving on the boards of Abortion Rights and Abortion Support Network. As part of her own efforts to destigmatise abortion she has taken part in many press and broadcast interviews about her own experiences of stigmatising abortion care.  

Susie has previously worked in leadership roles in UK charities with a particular focus on volunteers, learning and development and partnership management.

Rebecca is a Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), where she’s working on her NIHR/Wellbeing of Women Doctoral Fellowship. During her fellowship I will be exploring how the introduction of telemedicine has impacted the accessibility and equity of abortion services in England and Wales. Rebecca draws on critical public health, epidemiology, sociology, and anthropology, amongst other disciplines.  In addition to her role at the School, she is also the Research & Engagement Lead at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) and has been working there since 2018.