The eugenic roots of abortion in Britain
by Mark Sutherland, MercatorNet:
A recent book about a legal battle in 1920s Britain reveals one of the most ignominious, but little-known, movements in British history. A centenary in 2021 will show whether the movement will be acknowledged or continue to be ignored by historians.
March 17, 2021 will mark the centenary of the opening of Britain’s first family planning clinic at 61 Marlborough Road, Holloway, London.
The Mothers’ Clinic gave poor and working-class women ready access to contraceptives for the first time. Funded by Dr Marie Stopes and her second husband, Humphrey Roe, it provided instruction in birth control and supplied contraceptive devices free of charge to the women who went there.
If previous anniversaries are anything to go by, there will be celebratory events, promotional films and paid “advertorial” in British national newspapers. Speeches will praise Stopes and Roe for paving “the way to our reproductive freedom, seven years before women were given the vote.” In addition, and with righteous indignation, they may call out the Catholic opponents of Stopes’ work.
I became caught up in this story because I am a grandson of one of those Catholic opponents, Dr Halliday Sutherland, and was named in his memory. I used to wonder why he opposed the clinic so vehemently — indeed, in a 1922 book he had accused Stopes of “Exposing the Poor to Experiment”. Stopes sued him for libel and the case opened in the High Court in February 1923.
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