The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says the title of a planned debate about offering contraceptive to trainees was intended to be a joke.
The debate topic, which appeared in a program for the RANZCOG’s annual scientific conference in February, was titled, "Membership before maternity leave: should every registrar have a Mirena?" A Mirena is a contraceptive device that releases a small amount of hormone each day.
In a statement issued today, the RANZCOG said organisers of the conference were "very surprised that some have taken the facetious wording of the debate literally."
"The intent of the provocative title was to attract attention in a manner that was so ridiculous that it could not be misinterpreted as being in any way advocated. Unfortunately, this appears to have still occurred in some quarters," the statement said.
The RANZCOG said it had changed the name of the debate topic to "Pregnancy and Parenting during Specialist Training" because of the confusion.
RANZCOG national president Michael Permezel told The Australian he was not aware of the debate but said it was "in bad taste".
The newspaper also quoted an unnamed obstetrician as saying the debate topic was discriminatory.
RANZCOG said more than 80 per cent of its trainees and young consultants were women and as such it regarded combining parenting with training as a "very important issue".
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