The history of abortion: exploding the myths

Throughout its history the abortion campaign was shunned by feminists. ALRA, although all-women, had many male advisors, supporters and allies, but all were members of the eugenics and population control movement. The Eugenics Society, founded by Sybil Gotto, attracted middle-class, humanist women; the abortion campaign, like the campaigns for birth control, sterilization and divorce, was an offshoot of the Eugenics Society, but while the euthanasia campaign was fronted by men, the abortion campaign was fronted by women. After the Abortion Act huge numbers of abortions led to calls for restrictions; advocates responded with ‘a woman’s right to choose’, steering the new feminist movement of the 1970s to support abortion. In the process they killed off feminism, itself a reaction to the abuses suffered by women in the sexual revolution, with its emphasis on ‘free love’. Abortion advocates subsequently re-wrote the history of their campaign to emphasize it as feminist. In contrast, the early feminists realized that women’s rights did not conflict with the rights of the unborn: both suffer from abortion.

A Radical Campaign?

Abortion campaign historians point to its left wing supporters, but like right wing advocates they were largely humanists who supported eugenics and population control. The Victorian Neo-Malthusian movement, funded by the wealthy Drysdale family, believed in the small Malthusian family and warned of overpopulation if the poor were allowed to have too many children; they believed that people who practised fertility control showed they had evolved to a higher level. Eugenicists wanted more children from the fit (i.e. wealthy) and fewer from the unfit (i.e. poor). By the 1930s the two movements had moved closer together; the eugenicists realized that wealthy people were not going to have bigger families, and after the War began to campaign for the small family, to prevent the poor from out-breeding the rich. ALRAs founder Alice Jenkins saw abortion as the lesser of two evils  the greater evil being children; her co-founder Janet Chance wanted compulsory abortion for the degenerate. Marie Stopes of the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress advocated contraception to prevent abortion, while discreetly referring women for abortion. Abortion campaigners, as members of the Eugenics Society, supported all fertility control measures, including sterilization, in order to regulate the quantity and quality of the population; however, most publicly identified with only one campaign.

Poor Overburdened Mothers?

In the 1960s the abortion campaign switched its focus from the unfit mother to mothers who couldn’t cope – from the eugenic quality of the offspring of the poor to the plight of the unwanted children of the disadvantaged. Alice Jenkins coined the slogan law for the rich, suggesting that only the wealthy could afford a safe abortion, but many poor people saw abortion as a sign of the degeneracy of the rich. The campaigns founders were wealthy women, and the 1960s campaign notably lacked poor members; however, it was generously funded by the American Hopkins Donation Fund for poorly supported and pioneering causes; the Fund also guided the publicity campaign.  Advocates claimed abortion was the solution to delinquency, illegitimacy and disability, thus it would save society money; but they also believed the human race could be purified by removing its inferior elements; also that people helping the disabled could be better employed elsewhere  although, doubtless, their unemployment would show that they, too, were surplus to requirements. These were the ideas that inspired the Nazi euthanasia programme, but after the Second World War, in which millions perished, some abortion supporters believed the British population should be cut to a few millions; the international family planning movement was founded in London by campaigners who feared that non-whites would out-breed whites. The British Abortion Act allowed abortion to be exported to poor countries, and a disproportionate number of abortions are carried out on non-white Britons. The Abortion Act included a specific clause on disability; the Human Fertilization and Embryology Act (1990) reduced the upper limit for abortion from 28 to 24 weeks, but in excluding disability, legalized abortion up to birth for disabled foetuses. Instead of helping parents to care for affected children, and encouraging society to value diversity, public resources have been devoted to detecting disabled foetuses and steering parents to abort them in a process of search and destroy. As a result, the public has become more critical of parents deciding not to abort disabled children, and this increased negativity to disability is now influencing public support for assisted suicide for the disabled, reflecting the eugenics view of disability as a burden on society.

Abortion: Problem or Solution?

We now face a growing number of problems from abortion: millions of dead unborn babies, damaged women, families and relationships. Abortion was supposed to solve human problems, but killing problem humans, while leading to a birth slump that has proved economically disastrous, has also created even more of the social problems it was claimed to solve, because it destroys the most basic human bond  that of mother and child. In inventing the planned pregnancy, fertility campaigners also invented the unplanned pregnancy, leading to more and more crisis pregnancies solved by more and more abortions. Marie Stopess slogan every child a wanted child has led to even more unwanted children. Legalizing abortion has legalized injustice in our country and throughout the world, destroying lives, health and happiness; but before this injustice can be destroyed we must first destroy the myths surrounding the history of abortion.