The Anti-Abortion Campaign in England, 1966-1989

Olivia Dee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000316360
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du monde

This book comprises a history of the anti-abortion campaign in England, focusing on the period 1966-1989, which saw the highest concentration of anti-abortion activity during the twentieth century. It examines the tactics deployed by campaigners in their efforts to overturn the 1967 Abortion Act. Key themes include the influence of religion on attitudes towards sexuality and pregnancy; representations of women and the female body; and the varied, and often deeply contested, attitudes towards the status of the fetus articulated by both anti-abortion and pro-choice advocates during the years 1966-1989.

1 Abortion in England

For centuries abortionists and pregnant women have utilised a broad range of methods to terminate unwanted pregnancies. In the nineteenth century certain methods, invasive, dangerous and sometimes unsuccessful, were advertised as pharmacological remedies to ‘unblock’ and bring on menstruation. This concept of releasing a period and therefore preventing pregnancy reflected the archaic idea of ‘quickening,’ which referred to the first noticeable movements of the baby in the womb at around three months. Historian Barbara Brookes has argued that quickening was ‘merely the motions of the child becoming sensible to the mother,’ and that there is no sudden ‘revolution or change’ during gestation.¹ Yet this movement was infused with significance, considered by some to reflect viability and represent a clear division between a late period and an actual pregnancy.²

In 1803, Lord Ellenborough’s Malicious Shooting or Stabbing Act criminalised an extensive list of infractions, including ‘discharging loaded firearms, stabbing, cutting, wounding, poisoning and … the malicious setting Fire to Buildings,’ as well as abortion.³ The penalties were varied. Those who caused a miscarriage to a woman ‘quick with child’ were ‘liable to be fined, imprisoned, set in and upon the pillory, publickly [sic] or privately whipped … or to be transported beyond the seas for any term not exceeding fourteen years.’⁴ Significantly, the 1803 Act penalised the individual who procured or caused the miscarriage, rather than the pregnant woman herself, potentially indicating that this was legislation enacted to protect women from ‘the dangers of enforced abortion,’ rather than a punishment for women seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies.⁵ Brookes claims that ‘the small number of convictions for the crime stand in sharp contrast with the contemporary estimates of its prevalence,’⁶ and indeed it was eight years before anyone was indicted under Lord Ellenborough’s Act.⁷ By 1861, the Offences Against the Person Act had updated abortion legislation, changing the law to reflect the pregnant woman’s own involvement, advising that ‘every woman being with child, who with intent to procure her own miscarriage, shall unlawfully administer to herself any poison or any other noxious thing … shall be guilty of felony, and being convicted shall be liable … to be kept in penal servitude for life.’⁸ This was in addition to the abortionist, who would face similar consequences, whether or not the woman in question was actually pregnant.⁹

It is important to note, however, that these new regulations did little to curb the trade in illegal abortifacients. As Brookes as noted, it was estimated that between 1875 and 1884, an average of 13.7 of every 1,000 live births resulted in death from prematurity, rising to 19.8 between 1895 and 1904.¹⁰ At the turn of the century women were still searching for ways to rid themselves of unwanted pregnancy. Advertisements for abortion aids continued to provide them with a myriad of unreliable, potentially dangerous methods to attempt to do so. Drs Potts, Diggory and Peel claimed that although a ‘trend towards pragmatism’ was apparent in the legislation that had been enforced in the previous century, ‘induced abortion entered the twentieth century as a medical enigma wrapped in legal antiquities.’¹¹

Abortion existed in two worlds. For women who could afford it, securing a termination meant finding, and paying, a doctor willing to ‘sign off’ on a psychological condition that could be dangerously exacerbated by pregnancy. For those who couldn’t afford this expense, abortions were performed in backstreet clinics or even private residences, by those who knew the methods of bringing on a miscarriage, but often without adequate cleanliness or sterility. Working class women in the early twentieth century would share details of how to bring on late menstruation, and the traffic in abortifacients was flourishing.¹² The Lancet printed the concerns of doctors and medical professionals consistently, and their letters exposed the pseudoscience and risk associated with these ‘medicines.’ At the turn of the century Illustrated Bits¹³ contained an advertisement for ‘Ottey’s Strong Pills’ which promised to ‘restore females to their usual health.’¹⁴ The Lancet claimed that Ottey had offered to supply an undercover investigator with ‘a pill that would “shift anything” in the nature of an “obstruction.” ’¹⁵ By 17 February of the same year, The Lancet was reporting that Illustrated Bits was no longer running the advertisement and had returned the payment, stating ‘this is as it should be.’¹⁶ In May 1919, there were reports of a death from quinine, a substance used in the treatment of malaria which was known to cause rhythmical uterine contractions; the herbalist who sold the tablets was sentenced to twelve months hard labour.¹⁷ In 1929, The Lancet reported that numbers of abortionists brought to charge were steadily increasing since 1900,¹⁸ and that the difficulties of prosecution were notorious; women who had ‘courted the dangers of abortion’ were reluctant to discuss it, and ‘professional abortionists’ took ‘every precaution of secrecy.’¹⁹

And this continued. During the 1950s two particularly grotesque cases revealed that women were still risking their lives to terminate unwanted pregnancies. In 1955, a doctor from a Bradford hospital encountered a patient who had presented with vaginal bleeding, abortion, haemolytic anaemia and tubular necrosis of the kidney after taking pennyroyal, a volatile oil often sold for ‘obstructed menstruation.’²⁰ The patient died in hospital after enduring two weeks of complications caused by this abortifacient. In 1956, after taking an apiol contaminated with triorthocresyl phosphate, a twenty-one-year-old woman died seven days after being found, having never regained consciousness and with severe damage to the nervous system.²¹ Deaths of this nature emphasised the lengths that women were willing to go to rid themselves of an unwanted pregnancy. It was apparent that neither the threat of potential prosecution nor serious injury was an adequate deterrent.

In 1937, a report commissioned by Parliament entitled The Report on Maternal Mortality concluded that ‘the practice of artificially-induced abortion (a) is frequent and appears to be increasing; (b) is more prevalent in some districts than others; (c) is not restricted to any one class.’²² This was not a revelation. In 1930, the Inter-Departmental Committee on Abortion had estimated that there were between 44,000 and 60,000 illegal abortions annually.²³ Illegal abortion remained elusive and difficult to control as it was often unclear how many women had undergone self-induced abortion without repercussion, or who had refrained from seeking medical help. Dr Peter Diggory, medical advisor to the ALRA, described his own encounter with illegal abortion during his time at Kingston Hospital:

During the period 1964 to 1966 every woman admitted as a result of criminal abortion was confidentially questioned having been totally assured that nothing indicating her identity or that of her abortionist would ever be disclosed. There were 734 such women, 381 married and 353 single. Seventeen claimed to have taken drugs … twenty-one said that they had douched themselves … four hundred and twenty women gave stories which made it clear that something had been introduced through the cervix … in a further eighty-six of these cases [this was] an instrument of some kind … one hundred and sixteen women said that some form of soft body … had been inserted … five women did not know … . In a further six cases a general anaesthetic had been given and abortion performed by dilatation … finally there were two hundred and seventy women who were quite unable to give even a sketchy description of the method used.²⁴

The difficulties of policing and preventing abortion suggested that it was impossible to enforce strict legislation, and certainly the illegality of abortion was not enough to prevent it from taking place. The desperation of pregnant women, the butchery implicit in many failed attempts and the apparent ineffectiveness of the Victorian legislation were impetus for change.

The Abortion Law Reform Association formed in 1936 in response to the spectre of illegal abortion. Founder members Janet Chance, Joan Malleson, Alice Jenkins and Stella Browne had all previously been involved in the Worker’s Birth Control Group and believed in the importance of abortion for the promotion of sexual well-being and successful, functional relationships. Despite identifying as socialist-feminists, some members were anxious not to promote an agenda which focused on the concept of choice as an ‘absolute right’²⁵ Only Stella Browne was a vocal advocate of abortion on demand, and other members actively avoided making any link between abortion and sexual liberation.²⁶ By contrast, Brown advocated for abortion without restriction, asking that it be ‘the key to a new world for women, not a bulwark for things as they are … without insolent inquisition … ruinous financial charges … tangles of red tape.²⁷ Historian Sheila Rowbotham has argued that Browne was ‘always a minority even within causes supported by minorities’²⁸ and although Browne was more absolutist than her fellow ALRA members, the importance and influence of the ALRA was significant, helping to create a separate platform for the campaign for abortion reform, distinct from other welfare issues, such as eugenics or population control.²⁹

In 1937, Stanley Baldwin’s Conservative government established an Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, chaired by Liberal MP Sir Norman Birkett. The ALRA gave evidence before the Birkett Committee, providing a report that first enumerated the diverse reasons that...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Abortion in England
• 2 Abortion and Permissiveness in Parliament
• 3 Babies for Burning: The Realities of Implementation
• 4 Anti-Abortion Propaganda and the James White Bill
• 5 Defining ‘Pro-Life’: The David Alton Bill
• 6 One Body or Two?: Understandings of Embodiment and Personhood in Pro-Life Discourse
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index