8 - The Story of Abortion

Summary

In the nineteenth century abortion was widely available in Britain but abortionists risked life imprisonment. In 1927 The Lancet suggested that doctors should be allowed to act in good faith and in 1929 abortion to save a woman’s life became legal. Calls for change grew and the Abortion Law Reform Association was formed in 1936. In 1937 an investigation found that abortion caused 14% of all puerperal deaths. In 1938 a leading gynaecologist, Aleck Bourne, was acquitted after performing an abortion on a 14-year-old rape victim. In 1939 a committee recommended that grounds should include serious risk to health. War changed Parliament’s priorities and in 1952-4 abortion was the third commonest cause of maternal death: 80% of the women were married with children. Abortion was the leading cause in the 1960s, and, in 1967, after many failed attempts, Parliament passed the Abortion Act sponsored by David Steel, a young Liberal MP. The number of legal abortions rose to equal pre-1967 estimates and levelled off. By 1979 deaths from abortion – including those classed as spontaneous – had almost disappeared. Medical opinion was still split and NHS provision remained patchy for years.