Contragestives: Pregnant Uncertainties in Fertility Control
Location:
Online only
Date/time
Tue 3 March 2026
13:00-14:00
This event is organised by Mason Institute.
The next major innovation in fertility control is likely to come in the form of pills that can be taken weekly, monthly or just after a missed period, ensuring a state of non-pregnancy without it ever being known for sure whether or not a (potential) pregnancy had existed. These 'unpregnancy pills' or 'contragestives' operate in the invisible, ambiguous and poorly understood period after conception, posing a number of challenges for received ways of thinking about pregnancy and fertility control. This paper explores how medical and legal knowledges have intertwined and sedimented in the current regulation of early fertility control, and the risks and promise of contragestives for attempting to think otherwise.
Speaker
Sally Sheldon is Professor of Law at the University of Bristol. Her research interests lie primarily in health care law and ethics and the legal regulation of gender, with a particular focus on abortion law. Recent projects include a 'biography' of the Abortion Act 1967, carried out in collaboration with historians from Edinburgh University. This paper draws on her current project, an interdisciplinary Welcome-funded study of 'contragestive time', led by Professor Lisa Baraitser (Birkbeck). Sally is a series editor of CUP's pioneering Law in Context series, and an editor of Social & Legal Studies: an international journal.
This event is online only.
Image credit: Freepik