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  • Title: Marie Stopes Memorial Lecture 1975. The compulsory pregnancy lobby--then and now.
    Author: Simms M.
    Journal: J R Coll Gen Pract; 1975 Oct; 25(159):709-19. PubMed ID: 1104826.
    Abstract:
    The 1975 Marie Stopes Memorial Lecture reviews the efforts of Marie Stopes to promote contraception in the 1920s and reviews opposition to abortion voiced in the 1937 Committee of the Ministry of Health and the Home Office on Abortion. Marie Stopes believed motherhood to be too sacred an office to be held unwillingly and in the 1920s sought to combat compulsory pregnancy and high maternal mortality rates thorugh contraception. She was opposed to abortion. Abortion was common since laws regulating it were not enforced. The inquiry of 1937 to review abortion law provided groups passionately opposed to liberalization, 1 wing of the Church of England, The League of National Life and the Roman Catholics, to air their views. They believed that: 1) women do not need control or abortion; 2) left to themselves, they are happy to have many children; 3) if they seek birth prevention in large numbers this is due to pressure by men or poverty; 4) the notion of voluntary fertility is to be resisted, because otherwise doctors will cease to be free agents and become servants of the public; 5) voluntary fertility will lead to promiscuity; and 6) contraception leads to physical or psychological problems. The 1967 Abortion Act should not be restricted for such action would represent a triumph of the above reasoning and increase human misery.
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