The first piece is from Alastair Service, the chairman of
the Family Planning Association, and paints a fascinating picture of his time
as a lobby organiser for the Abortion Law Reform Association while the 1967 Abortion Act passed through
Parliament.
He takes us through the initial repetitious days he spent
scurrying across the Central Lobby approaching MP’s – some of them were
“fiercely bearded”, a wonderful description I hope to hear more often. There
were also mass lobbies, but unfortunately MPs didn’t really turn up. So they
went to the Bar where funnily enough they found a large number of MPs to lobby.
There were some barriers to cross: one MP told Service “send me all your stuff
and I’ll talk it over with my wife”, while another declared “I don’t vote on
things like that – I concentrate on the major issues”, presumably referencing
the Domestic and Appellate Proceedings (Restricting of Publicity Bill)
which was competing for members attention at the time. Crucial stuff….
Service and his fellow campaigners ploughed on, rounding up
MPs, nagging them during the late night sittings until they promised to stay to
vote. Eventually while Service and Houghton were in a café and chatting about a
campaign for free contraception, the final stage passed. The lesson: a watched
Parliament never votes. Best to go and have a cup of tea.
One MP who Service definitely didn’t need to nag in the late hours of the evening to back the Bill was it’s architect David Steel. He is naturally pleased to celebrate the ten year anniversary of the abortion law reform in 1978. A parliamentary inquiry in to the Act found that it was responsible for “relieving a vast amount of individual suffering.” He took on those who said he wanted to kill babies, that he was going to hell, that he didn’t care about families, and he won. And yet he still speaks of the “respect” he has for his opponents. It seems more than fair that the authors of this booklet decided that he should be depicted as a knight (albeit at first glance a little confusing.)
These articles document the tragic conditions under which
illegal abortion took place, and the risk women took with their lives and
health when faced with an unwanted pregnancy. One case detailed is of a 36 year old woman who died from a “septic
abortion followed by acute blood poisoning”, after deciding that 10 children in
17 years was enough. Even the Coroner expressed his sympathy, stating that he
could “understand the desperate feeling that she must have had when she found
herself once again pregnant.”
These also show how, despite the illegality, there was a
community that worked together to provide abortions for these desperate women
in a safer environment than those found down a back-alley. These “medical men”
were breaking the law, but they were valued and supported, with defence funds
raised when they faced prosecution. And when Dr Daniel Powell of Tooting , “the
most watched medical man by Scotland Yard” died, “women from all parts of the
country journeyed to London” to pay their respects.
Simms wrote that the scrapbook demonstrated the importance
of free, legal abortion to those who in the late 1970s wanted the return of a
restrictive abortion law, but the picture they paint serves as just a
useful a reminder of life without legal abortion today.
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