Abortion clinics and protest, Power List influencer Zanny Minton Beddoes, Prom composers

It’s been reported this week that an abortion clinic has been forced to close as a direct result of protest activity. This is believed to be a first in the UK, though both the main providers of abortion services – BPAS and Marie Stopes - deny it’s one of their sites. Are anti-abortion protests beginning to affect the provision of these services to women? Jenni speaks to Labour MP Diane Abbott, who sponsored an early day motion in parliament to introduce buffer zones as a result of the protest activity outside clinics, and to Genevieve Edwards, from Marie Stopes UK, one of the biggest abortion providers in the country.

Zanny Minton Beddoes, the first female Editor-In-Chief of The Economist in the publication’s 172 year history, is number nine on our 2015 Power List. Since joining the magazine in 1994, she’s held roles including Business Affairs Editor, Economics Editor and Emerging Markets Correspondent before reaching the top spot. She was chosen by our judges as a high level opinion former who is below most radars, and because she can apparently count Barack Obama and Angela Merkel as listeners to her podcast. She talks to Jenni about how influential she feels knowing that the world’s movers and shakers are listening to what she has to say.

All of the main political parties in Great Britain entered the last election with policies on childcare aimed at supporting hard working families. The Government has proudly defended its record for helping women with children into work through affordable childcare. But has the voice of the traditional family with a stay at home parent, often a mother, disappeared from policy debates? And if we have a consensus over what families need, how has it emerged? Jenni talks to Giselle Cory, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, and to Belinda Brown, Honorary Research Associate at University College London, who writes for the Conservative Woman.

Anyone who bakes will by now have come across the American cup as a unit of measurement. Why the Americans still use them to make their traditional brownies and pancakes is all part of the baffling and convoluted history of measuring the things we cook and eat. In her book Consider The Fork, Bee Wilson looks at the history of innovation in the kitchen – including the different ways we use measuring tools to replicate our recipes. Catherine Carr went to visit her at home, where she tried her hand at a recipe for an autumnal American treat.

Jenni speaks to two composers who both have brand new work at this year’s Proms - Tansy Davies and Shiori Usui. Tansy Davies’ latest work, Re-Greening, was written especially for the National Youth Orchestra: a celebration of new life and spring time, it will be premiered by 165 young musicians in a week-long tour which will culminate in a performance at the Proms on 8 August. Shiori Usui’s latest work, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis s.l., is inspired by the fungus of the same name, and receives its world premiere on Saturday 25 July in a Prom performed by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.