In Desperation - Letters to the Abortion Law Reform Association from the 1960s

During the 1960s, the Abortion Law Reform Association received thousands of letters from women, their relatives and friends, all desperate for advice about abortion. The booklet below includes a selection of these incredibly poignant letters.

These letters represent a tiny handful of all the women who needed abortion care before the Act of 1967, and the vast majority would have been forced to continue with their pregnancy despite their circumstances. These were women who were suicidal, women who had experienced multiple miscarriages, women with severe medical conditions, women who had been abandoned by their partners, women living in poverty without enough money to support their existing family, and women who just simply couldn't cope with having a child.

We will be sharing individual letters on Twitter for the next couple of weeks using the hashtag #bpasarchive , and a gallery of the full booklet is below.

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