Can you tell us more about this latest from the TGA?

Yeah, so the TGA last week approved two things.

First of all, they extended the time period where a doctor can prescribe medication for a woman to have a medical abortion from nine weeks gestation of the pregnancy to 10 weeks gestation of the pregnancy.

So this gives women an extra week to be able to access and abortion medically.

And this is huge because we know that the women who have the most trouble navigating to an abortion provider are women who come from, for instance, rural backgrounds or disadvantaged backgrounds.

And previously, if they missed the nine-week mark, then they would need to have a surgical rather than a medical abortion which can be even more difficult to access and more costly.

So this is great news to have this extension of one more week and it brings it into line with our current national abortion guidelines that have been developed by the Royal Australian New Zealand College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and endorsed by the Royal Australian College of GPs.

You said that, you know, for certain women, for example, women living in rural areas where it's a lot harder to access these services, this could be really positive for these group of women i was wondering if you could just briefly talk about the the state of access to abortion services but also general reproductive health services for women in the community and where the gaps are still

What does this new national plan cover in Australia and why was it needed?

Yes, so the National Endometriosis Management Plan was introduced in order to really translate the guidelines into practice.

So we know that there are very large numbers of women with endometriosis in the community.

They turn to GPs first to diagnose and then to manage the condition.

So what we really wanted to do was to support GPs to deliver what we know is best practice care, what the guideline recommendations actually say.

And so we developed the plan so that patients and GPs can sit together during a consultation and go through and identify what the current issues are for the woman, what her priorities are and what she needs to have addressed.

And they can both see by using the plan what the guidelines recommend in this situation.

What's the picture like in Australia?

I spoke to Professor Daniel Matzer, who's Director of the Sphere Centre of Research Excellence based at Monash University.

Yeah, so this was a national women's health survey.

And what we asked was for those women who had had an IUD in the past or currently had an IUD in place, what level of pain they felt they experienced at the time of insertion.

And we found the findings very interesting because this has been such a big issue highlighted by so many women and the media around what perceived pain is with insertion.

So we found that about 50% of women said that they experienced no pain or mild pain.

And this was, I think, a very interesting finding.

Only 19% said no. that they experienced severe pain when they had their IUD inserted.

Is that fair?

I spoke to Professor Danielle Mazza, who's director of the Sphere Center of Research Excellence based at Monash University.

Yeah, so this was a, a national, a women's health survey, and what we asked, uh, was, uh, for those women who had had an IUD in the past or currently had an IUD in place, uh, what level of pain they felt they experienced at the time of insertion.

And we found the findings, uh, very interesting because this has been such a, a big issue highlighted by so many women and the media, um, around, uh, what p- a perceived pain is with insertion.

So we found that about 50% of women said that they experienced no pain or mild pain, and this, uh, was I think a very interesting finding.

Only 19% said that they experienced severe pain when they had their IUD inserted, and I think this is contrary to what women are looking at when they're looking at their social media feeds that are telling them that all IUD insertions are very painful.

We, we asked them what their perceived knowledge was about IUDs and interestingly, the, the, the women who felt they knew more about IUDs actually reported more pain.

So we call this the nori- knowledge paradox because you would think that if you, if you understood more about, um, IUDs and what was happening with insertion, that you might be more relaxed about it and, and not feel so much pain.

Is that fair?