An investigation into claims that some doctors are granting women illegal abortions based on the sex of their unborn baby has been launched by the Department of Health.

It has been sparked by an undercover newspaper investigation into sex-selection abortions, secretly filming doctors at British clinics agreeing to terminate foetuses because they were either male or female.

Doctors were allegedly recorded admitting they were prepared to falsify paperwork to arrange the illegal abortions.

Health secretary Andrew Lansley said he was extremely concerned about the allegations made by the Daily Telegraph and has instructed officials investigate.

He said: “I’m extremely concerned to hear about these allegations. Sex selection is illegal and is morally wrong. I’ve asked my officials to investigate this as a matter of urgency.”

The newspaper said undercover reporters accompanied pregnant women to nine clinics in different parts of the country. In three cases, doctors were recorded offering to arrange terminations after being told the women did not want to go ahead with the pregnancy because of their unborn child’s sex.

In the UK, abortions are allowed on certain grounds, including that continuing with the pregnancy would be a greater risk to the woman’s life, physical or mental health than ending the pregnancy, continuing would be more of a risk to the physical or mental health of any of the woman’s existing children and if there was a real risk the child would have a serious physical or mental disability.

In September, Conservative backbencher Nadine Dorries and Labour’s Frank Field lost a House of Commons vote on the issue of abortion counselling.

They wanted to prevent non-statutory abortion providers such as Marie Stopes and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service from offering counselling. Dorries said the organisations had a vested interest because they received money for carrying out terminations,.

One of the hundreds of women who protested outside the Virginia State Capitol wore a T-shirt which read “Say No to State-Mandated Rape”, in reference to one of two new bills set to make getting a legal abortion much harder in the state.

The two bills have prompted mounting outrage since passing through the Virginia House last week. The first “personhood” bill gives state rights to an unborn child, a fertilised egg, while the second requires any woman who wants to have an abortion to undergo an ultrasound beforehand. As most early stage abortions are carried out before 12 weeks, this is an invasive procedure where a condom-covered probe is inserted into the vagina until an image is produced. The bill would also then give the woman an “opportunity to view the ultrasound image of her fetus prior to the abortion”, though she can opt out of this.

Proponents of the plan believe women should be given longer to confront the choices they are about to make, despite the fact that they are likely to have thought long and hard about the decision and are in the midst of a very emotional and stressful time.

CNN reports that the bill is being backed by Republican Robert Marshall, a long-running abortion opponent who has tried to repeatedly pass laws which give rights to the unborn child.

A petition opposing both bills has been organised by ProgressVA and already has 23,526 signatures. It argues that “women’s medical decisions about her body should be between her, her family and her doctor” — not the government.

Dahlia Lithwick, a writer for slate.com, also argues that the bill in support of a “transvaginal ultrasound” contravenes the landmark ruling of Roe vs Wade, which cleared the path for safe, legal abortion in the US. Litwick writes: “The problem is not just that the woman and her physician (the core relationship protected in Roe) no longer matter at all in deciding whether an abortion is proper. It is that the physician is being commandeered by the state to perform a medically unnecessary procedure upon a woman,” she says.

According to information from the Guttmacher Institute it seems that Virginia is not alone in passing through laws which require an ultrasound – seven other states also require this: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

The Virginia law still has to pass through the state senate education and health committee. Campaigners hope that the media backlash will help shed light on the bill and put the rights back into the hands of women.

Last week, the government, led by the equalities minister, Lynne Featherstone, described violence against young women and girls as “shocking”. Yet there are still worrying reports that the only refuge for teenage girls fleeing violence in London is on the brink of closure and is no longer accepting new referrals.

Since last November, when the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, asked me to sit on a commission on women’s safety, I have heard from a wide variety of women’s groups on the cumulative impact of the government’s policies on women’s safety. With only a few more evidence-gathering sessions left before we compile our initial findings, the overall picture is already troubling. The commission was set up after a series of government announcements set alarm bells ringing, from the attempt to give rape defendants unique status by offering them anonymity to secretary of state for justice Kenneth Clarke’s suggestion that “real” rape was as an attack by a stranger, when 80% of cases today are by partners, ex-partners or acquaintances. Combined with cuts to legal aid and concerns about reductions in police officers and street lighting, a worrying picture for women’s safety, as well as women’s employment and economic prospects was beginning to emerge.

Evidence suggests support for women survivors of violence is also being hit hard. We’ve spoken directly to Professor Sylvia Walby, whose report just a few weeks ago suggested that, while local authority budgets have been slashed by 27%, the cut for refuges is 31%.

The result is that women’s support services face an increasingly precarious future. Many organisations are concerned that the coalition is already consulting on plans to change the way housing benefit is paid to refuges, and on channelling funding for rape crisis centres through new police and crime commissioners, who may not see these services as a priority in austere times.

We cannot let these worrying developments – the real and cumulative impact of the government’s decisions – go unnoticed and unchallenged. The commission aims to report by International Women’s Day on 8 March.

Teeth grinding (the medical term is bruxism) is not only annoying but fairly common. It’s a condition in which you grind or gnash your teeth, especially in your sleep. It may not cause any problems but can give you headaches, a sore face (from clenching facial muscles all night) and jaw pain. Persistent teeth grinding may damage the joints in the jaw, which will make it painful to yawn or chew.

No one knows what causes teeth-grinding. Children do it more often than adults, possibly because their baby teeth are smoother and more amenable to grinding. It is common if you are stressed or anxious. Occasionally it can be due to your upper and lower teeth not being aligned properly or because of medications, including some antidepressants.

There is no magic cure, but mouthguards are often recommended to protect the teeth at night. Think sports guard for when you’re playing rugby or hockey and you’ll get the look. But do they work or is there anything just as effective but less intrusive?

The solution

“Mouthguards work well but they are best fitted professionally,” says Damien Walmsley, scientific adviser to the British Dental Association. “You should see your dentist, who will take an impression and usually fit one on the top teeth. They’re plastic and can be soft, although people can chew through them, in which case they’ll need a harder guard. If you get one from the chemist and mould it yourself it won’t fit well enough.”

They work by separating the teeth and preventing grinding. You can then see if you’re still grinding by checking the wear and tear on the guard. They can take some time to get used to but but they stop your face and jaw aching and reduce the likelihood of you breaking your teeth. You only have to wear the guard at night but you may need to continually use it if your grinding has become an intractable habit.

If you don’t fancy a mouthguard and suspect stress is making you grind your teeth, you can try relaxation techniques and meditation. You should rest your tongue upwards, with your teeth apart and lips closed, which reduces the tendency to stiffen your jaw and grind. Children who do it can be helped by getting them to relax before they go to sleep with a bath and story.

It’s worth going to the dentist if you grind your teeth, not only for a fitted guard but to check your teeth are not misaligned. Sometimes reshaping the surface of teeth will help. But if it’s an ongoing problem, forget the cosmetic drawbacks and get yourself a mouthguard.

The covers of previous issues, enlarged and stacked up in the offices of Cosmopolitan, show how much has changed since the magazine was launched 40 years ago – and how much hasn’t. The first issue, March 1972, features an interview with Michael Parkinson talking about his vasectomy – “the most beautiful thing a man can do for a woman” – which feels quite quaint, though there is also Jilly Cooper rating the bedroom skills of various men including David Niven and Roy Jenkins.

I recognise one cover from my teens and read out the line – “could you handle sex with a boomerang penis?” – with a childish snigger. “It’s such an outrageous coverline,” says Louise Court, with a laugh. As if any editor of Cosmopolitan could consider anything outrageous. This is the magazine that gave its female readers more knowledge about how to find their way round a man’s body (but more importantly, their own) than anything else. And still does.

In the US, Helen Gurley Brown had in the 60s transformed Cosmopolitan from a staid, general interest magazine into something that celebrated the sexual revolution and represented the young women who were living through it. “Her big thing is living big and going for it,” says Court. Gurley Brown, who turned 90 this weekend and is still international editor-in-chief (the magazine has 64 editions distributed in 100 countries), doesn’t have input on a monthly basis, says Court, “but I’m sure if there was stuff we were doing she wasn’t happy with we’d be the first to know, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

Friendly and approachable, Court still visibly bridles at Cosmo’s reputation that it is all blowjob tips and cheeky coverlines. It would be wrong, she says, “to say we’re purely about sex – the biggest content, about a quarter, is fashion and beauty – but if you can actually talk to somebody about the most intimate part of their lives, it opens you up to have a conversation about all sorts of things because you’ve got a thing of trust there.

“We’re not purely a shopping manual. Most people prize having a happy relationship as one of the most important things in their lives, and one of the keys is having a happy sex life. The physical side is really important. There has to be newness, there has to be science or a sense of humour [in Cosmo's sex features]. It shouldn’t be preachy or po-faced. Every time I read one, I think ‘I may not want to try it, but I didn’t know about it.’ It’s about a woman feeling confident she can make the right choices about her sex life, and be in control of what she wants to do and doesn’t want to do in the bedroom.”

Between the covers

Is she surprised that, 40 years on, there is still much that hasn’t changed? “Absolutely. There are still sexual inequalities. There are still pockets of society that judge women’s love lives in a way they wouldn’t dream of judging a man. The ease of access to so much porn online now is wreaking havoc with a lot of women’s love lives, putting them in situations where they may be made to feel prudish if they don’t want to do something, although there are other readers happy to explore everything.

“There is a lot of pressure on women in lots of areas of their lives, on their careers and attempts to get ahead at work, and as the readers get older there is still that eternal pressure of how to balance work and children. On one hand, we’ve got more choices and freedom, but I don’t think it’s got any easier being a woman.”

At a time when more than a million young people are unemployed, and with women hit especially hard by cutbacks, – aren’t there more important things a magazine should be focusing on than shopping and relationship advice? “It’s a balance,” Court replies. “Obviously work is really important, but so are relationships.”

She points to the campaign the magazine ran last year called Generation Angry: “All these young women who come out of university, and they can’t get the jobs they wanted, they can’t get on the housing ladder. We were the first people to really try and pull it together.”

The magazine has just launched an online petition calling for the government to make equal pay auditing compulsory and it’s addressing the gender pay gap as part of its bigger campaign, which starts next month, to explore what feminism means to its readers.

“We’ve had these T-shirts printed: ‘I use the F word, do you?’ I still think there are some young women who don’t particularly like the word “feminism”. They obviously believe they should have equal pay and the same freedoms as a man, but that’s why we thought it was a really good time to get it on the agenda and girls talking about it.

“A lot of young women were brought up with that whole thing – you’re the girls who can have it all, if you want that job you can have it. A lot of those opportunities were fought for by feminists in the first place. They’ve worked hard at school and university, done all the things they were meant to do and the rug has been pulled out from under their feet. I think young women are thinking about feminism again.”

Cosmo’s competition

She points to last year’s SlutWalks, “which I can’t imagine would have happened two years before that. I think they thought a lot of the battles had been won, and now they are realising they probably haven’t.”

Still, with a wealth of rival magazines, newspapers and feminist sites such as Jezebel all covering Cosmopolitan’s once-pioneering ground, how distinctive can the magazine be now? And for all its loyalty to its campaigning heritage, the monthly is still reliant on magazine staples such as shopping, celebrities and advertisements for cosmetic surgery: a flick back through old issues, with their wordy reviews of serious films, and extracts from writers such as John Fowles and Cesare Pavese, shows how different women’s magazines once were.

Cosmopolitan has a readership of 1.6 million, Court reminds me several times, although sales fell year on year by 5.7% to 377,580 according to last week’s ABC figures for June to December 2011, though it fared better than many rivals.

Court is unruffled. “We’re the No 1 [women's magazine] on Apple Newsstand – that’s the same product you get in print but the girls look at it on their phone or iPad and our sales are 6,000 so we’re more or less flat. You’ll always have a bit of up and down on circulation, but I think our circulation figures are good.”

Has she been set targets by the magazine’s publishing company, Hearst? “I don’t feel under pressure,” she says. “Nobody has told me anyway. I want to put readers on, of course. The biggest pressure is from me.”

She is proud of the 1,147,298 unique visitors (the figure for January) the Cosmopolitan website gets, but says she doesn’t think younger readers will migrate exclusively online.

“Young women take all the digital stuff for granted but they still get really excited by the physical, tangible magazine.”

Cosmo on Campus, a free spin-off magazine delivered to 250,000 university students four times a year, is, she says, as much a part of Cosmopolitan’s future as digital innovations, such as a new app that allows readers to scan the fashion pages and buy the clothes online. “Print is still really important to readers, but they want to touch base with their magazine in different ways.”

How long will Court stay at Cosmopolitan? She says she doesn’t know. “I love it. It’s a great job. I get a bit evangelical about it, because of the relationship we have with our readers, which I’ve never had on any other magazine I’ve worked on. I know this sounds a bit cheesy, but you do feel we are a force for good.”