Reproductive coercion encompasses a collection of pregnancy promoting and pregnancy avoiding behaviours. Coercion may vary in severity and be perpetrated by intimate partners or others. Research is complicated by the inclusion of behaviours that do not necessarily involve an intention to influence reproduction, such as contraceptive sabotage. These behaviours are the most common, but are not always included in survey instruments. This may explain why the prevalence of reproductive coercion varies widely. Prevalence also varies when coerced abortion is included in survey instruments. When it is, it seems roughly comparable in prevalence to coercion intended to impregnate. The extent and nature of coerced abortion can also be derived from studies that explore the reasons why women access abortion, the relationship between abortion and intimate partner violence, and online blogs and forums. This narrative review of reproductive coercion examines the evidence and attempts to comprehend why coerced abortion has been neglected.

Man is capable of acquiring an ever increasing number of motor responses and in this way to improve his relationship with the environment. Obviously, if it was necessary to create a new motor organization for each new situation, the human motor behaviour would be chaotic for the sheer number of motor responses which would have to be available for ready utilization. Indeed, it is easier for the central nervous system to adjust to new environmental conditions and to different goals by compounding new motor programs from previously learnt subroutines. These subroutines -the motor patterns -evolve during the performer's life through general learning and specific training processes. The pattern approach to the motor organization is not new. Broer (1966) relates the shape of the movement with the skill goal and gives a set of examples with different goals but for which the shape is conserved. Wickstrom (1977) calls these shapes «Movement patterns». Obviously, similar limb kinematic relationships correspond to similar kinetic relationships, a fact already pointed out by Higgins (1972) when he states that each motor skill consists of three -motor, muscular and movement components. According to Wickstrom the development of each skill is an extensive process focused successively upon three major steps: the minimal form, the mature form and the sport skill form. The core of the mature form is the fundamental motor pattern. The sport skill is adapted to special requirements by the rules or by the strategy of each sport. From a mechanical point of view the human body «is» an articulated link system which simultaneously behaves as a rigid one when it resorts to external support to achieve the mechanical energy flows envolved in a desired performance. The efficiency of such a performance is determined by the mechanical work of the limbs but its final effect can be deduced from the knowledge of the center of mass kinematics and of the force exerted on the support. The motor organization may thus be conceived as integrating two simultaneous mechanical behaviours: an articulated link system relatively to the limb movements and a rigid system relatively to the external environment. Indeed if the human body behaved strictly as a «rigid system» it would have the tendency to rotate about the center of the support by an amount which would be proportional to the energy it possessed. In reality this does not occur and, instead, the system performs a set of intersegmental movements in accordance with the goal proposed for the desired skill and the result of this «articulated» behaviour is transferred to that of the «rigid» mode. Two complementary approaches to the biomechanical study of human motor patterns are thus available: the evaluation of the internal work performed by the limbs and the dynamical analysis of the center of mass of the «rigid body» system.

Can we speak of a feminine approach to caring for the body? If there is such an approach, how does culture influence or even construct it? Do we need a new culture of care in the medical field? What can a woman’s contribution be to transform culture in this area? In this analysis, I take the human body and its way of being in the world as my starting point, so that we could speak, using Sartrean terminology, of a ‘psychical body’. Then I consider the symbiosis that occurs during pregnancy, and I speak of it as a ‘relational modality’, that gives an ‘existential orientation’ to women, whether or not they are biological mothers. Finally, I show some implications of this relational modality for the culture of care.

This paper examines the problem of dying alone in the context of no-visitors hospital policy during the COVID-19 pandemic. It critically analyses a rights-based solution, offering a democratized visitors policy alternative, premised on the value of legal justice. While an inclusive, participatory, and thoroughly justified visitors' policy, which takes into account the good of all stakeholders in the process, is indeed the right alternative to the paternalistic, top-down no-visitors policy, I argue that the democratized visitors' policy alternative ought to be grounded on reasons of both justice and love. Legal justice and claimable individual rights, though important, are limited and cannot fully capture the vicissitudes of mutual vulnerabilities and the moral stringency of duties of mutual care. In the context of suffering and death, instances of extreme vulnerability and interdependence, individual rights of autonomy and self-determination prove insufficient to meet our most basic needs for love, human presence, and accompaniment.

Ethical justification for clinical research may invoke equipoise, an element of scientific uncertainty regarding the superior choice if presented with different therapeutic options. Given a relative lack of scientific knowledge available for females related to historic tendencies for research to focus predominantly on males, clinical equipoise alone when applied to the context of sex differences may not be sufficient for us to appreciate whether or how a therapy might vary in its effects depending upon participant sex. I explore the analogy of chirality or ‘handedness,’ arguing we might think of the two sexes as possessing this property: female and male are equally human, yet knowledge of the biology of one sex cannot be completely superimposed onto the other. I propose the concept of chiral equipoise, suggesting that in ethical deliberations around clinical research we consider not only the uncertainty between therapeutic options, but also ask: for which sex?

The ethics of physical restraint in the Emergency Department (and elsewhere) has always been an emotive and controversial issue. Recently a vanguard of advocacy groups and regulatory agencies have been aiming to reduce and optimize its use, resulting in new guidance around physical restraint. This article considers prevailing opinions surrounding physical restraint in the Emergency Department using a Principlist model of medical ethics (specifically that of Beauchamp and Childress’ four pillars). It also examines the ethical underpinning of the new guidance on the usage of restraint. Ultimately, examination from a Principlist perspective suggests the use of physical restraint in the Emergency Department is justified, as long as it is used carefully. Despite this, physical restraint can have severe physical and psychological consequences for patients, and work needs to be continued into its reduction and optimization.

The current coronavirus pandemic presents the greatest healthcare crisis in living memory. Hospitals across the world have faced unprecedented pressure. In the face of this tidal wave of demand for limited healthcare resources, how are clinicians to identify patients most likely to benefit? Should age or frailty be discriminators? This paper seeks to analyse the current evidence-base, seeking a nuanced approach to pandemic decision-making, such as admission to critical care.