"A new world for women"? Abortion law reform in Britain during the 1930s

American Historical Review

Volumn 106, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 431-459

  Brooke, Stephen ^a  

^a YORK UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33645165809     PISSN: 00028762     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2651613     Document Type: Article

References (237)

1. Stella Browne, "The Right to Abortion," in F. W. Stella Browne, A. M. Ludovici, and Harry Roberts, Abortion (London, 1935), 29, 31, 45.
2. Celeste Michelle Condit, Decoding Abortion Rhetoric (Urbana, Ill., 1990), 14-15;
3. Jane Jenson, "Changing Discourse, Changing Agendas: Political Rights and Reproductive Policies in France," in Mary Fainsod Katzenstein and Carol McClung Mueller, eds., The Women's Movements of the United States and Western Europe (Philadelphia, 1987), 64-88.
4. See, for example, Kathleen Canning, "Historicizing the Linguistic Turn," Signs 19 (1994): 396.
5. See Cornelie Usborne, The Politics of the Body in Weimar Germany: Women's Reproductive Rights and Duties (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1992);
6. Atina Grossmann, "Abortion and Economic Crisis: The 1931 Campaign against Paragraph 218," in Renate Bridenthal, Grossmann, and Marion Kaplan, eds., When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York, 1984), 66-87;
7. Atina Grossmann, Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920-1950 (New York, 1995);
8. Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York, 1987).
9. For France, see Mary Louise Roberts, Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927 (Chicago, 1994), chap. 4.
10. Leslie J. Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973 (Berkeley, Calif., 1997), 2-3;
11. Donna Harsch, "Society, the State, and Abortion in East Germany, 1950-72," AHR 102 (February 1997): 53-84.
12. For the United States, see also Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley, 1984).
13. The Infant Life (Preservation) Act (19 and 20 George 5, c. 34), Section 1, Sub-section 1.
14. On the campaign for the 1967 Act, see Barbara Brookes, Abortion in England 1900-1967 (London, 1988);
15. Keith Hindell and Madeleine Simms, Abortion Law Reformed (London, 1971);
16. Joni Lovenduski, "Parliament, Pressure Groups, Networks and the Women's Movement: The Politics of Abortion Law Reform in Britain 1967-83," in Lovenduski and Joyce Outshoorn, eds., The New Politics of Abortion (London, 1986), 231-56;
17. Madeleine Simms, "Abortion: The Myth of the Golden Age," in Bridget Hutter and Gillian Williams, eds., Controlling Women: The Normal and the Deviant (London, 1981), 165-86.
18. Report of an Investigation into Maternal Mortality (London, 1937), Cmd. 5422, 197, 208.
19. On Germany, see Usborne, Politics of the Body in Weimar Germany;
20. Grossmann, Reforming Sex.
21. See Pamela Graves, Labour Women: Women in British Working-Class Politics, 1918-1939 (Cambridge, 1994);
22. Harold Smith, "Sex vs. Class: British Feminists and the Labour Movement, 1919-29," Historian 47 (1984): 19-37;
23. Pat Thane, "The Women of the British Labour Party and Feminism, 1906-45," in Harold Smith, ed., British Feminism in the Twentieth Century (Amherst, Mass., 1990), 124-43;
24. Amy Black and Stephen Brooke, "The Labour Party, Women and the Problem of Gender, 1951-66," Journal of British Studies 36 (1997): 447-49.
25. For a general discussion of this, see Leonore Davidoff, "Regarding Some Old Husbands' Tales': Public and Private in Feminist History," in Joan B. Landes, ed., Feminism, the Public and the Private (Oxford, 1998), 164-94.
26. For historical treatments, see Martha Vicinus, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850-1920 (London, 1985);
27. Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes (Chicago, 1988);
28. Mary Poovey, Uneven Development: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England (Chicago, 1988);
29. Philippa Levine, Feminist Lives in Victorian England: Private Roles and Public Commitment (Oxford, 1990);
30. Poovey, "Domesticity and Class Formation: Chadwick's 1842 Sanitary Report," in David Simpson, ed., Subject to History: Ideology, Class, Gender (Ithaca, N.Y., 1991), 65-83;
31. Carol Smart, "Disruptive Bodies and Unruly Sex: The Regulation of Reproduction and Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century," in Carol Smart, ed., Regulating Womanhood: Historical Essays on Marriage, Motherhood and Sexuality (London, 1992), 7-32;
32. Catherine Hall, White, Male and Middle Class (Cambridge, 1992);
33. Sonya Rose, Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England (Berkeley, Calif., 1992);
34. Philippa Levine, "Consistent Contradictions: Prostitution and Protective Labour Legislation in Nineteenth-Century England," Social History 16 (1994): 17-35;
35. Sonya Rose, "Protective Labor Legislation in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Gender, Class, and the Liberal State," in Laura L. Frader and Rose, eds., Gender and Class in Modern Europe (Ithaca, 1996), 193-210;
36. Anna Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (London, 1995).
37. See Anna Davin, "Imperialism and Motherhood," History Workshop Journal 5 (1978): 9-66;
38. Gisela Bock and Pat Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Politics: Women and the Rise of European Welfare States 1880s-1950s (London, 1991);
39. Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, eds., Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (London, 1993).
40. See Jane Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood: Child and Maternal Welfare in England, 1900-39 (London, 1980), chaps. 2-3;
41. Ellen Ross, Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London, 1870-1914 (New York, 1993), chap. 7;
42. Caroline Rowan, "'Mothers, Vote Labour!' The State, the Labour Movement and Working-Class Mothers," in Rosalind Brunt and Rowan, eds., Feminism, Culture and Politics (London, 1982), 59-84;
43. Carol Dyhouse, "Working Class Mothers and Infant Mortality in England, 1895-1914," Journal of Social History 12 (1978): 121-42;
44. Jane Lewis, "The Working Class Wife and Mother and State Intervention, 1870-1918," in Lewis, ed., Labour and Love: Women's Experience of Home and Family 1850-1940 (Oxford, 1986), 99-122.
45. Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, "Womanly Duties: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States in France, Germany, Great Britain and the United States, 1880-1920," AHR 95 (October 1990): 1079.
46. Susan Pedersen, "Gender, Welfare, and Citizenship in Britain during the Great War," AHR 95 (October 1990): 1004;
47. Pedersen, Family, Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State in Britain and France, 1914-45 (Cambridge, 1993), 144.
48. Pedersen, Family, Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State, 145.
49. Carole Pateman, "Equality, Difference, and Subordination: The Politics of Motherhood," in Gisela Bock and Susan James, eds., Beyond Equality and Difference (London, 1992), 17-31.
50. Patricia Knight, "Women and Abortion in Victorian and Edwardian England," History Workshop Journal 4 (Autumn 1977): 56-69;
51. Angus McLaren, Birth Control in Nineteenth-Century England (London, 1978), 215-53.
52. See also Barbara Brookes, "Women and Reproduction c. 1860-1919," in Lewis, Labour and Love, 149-74;
53. Joanna Bourke, Working Class Cultures in Britain 1890-1960 (London, 1996), chap. 2;
54. Elizabeth Roberts, Women and Families: An Oral History, 1940-1970 (Oxford, 1995), chaps. 4-5;
55. Melanie Tebbutt, Women's Talk: A Social History of Gossip in Working-Class Neighbourhoods, 1880-1960 (Aldershot, 1995), 75, 88;
56. Sally Alexander, "The Mysteries and Secrets of Women's Bodies: Sexual Knowledge in the First Half of the Century," in Mica Nava and Alan O'Shea, eds., Modern Times: Reflections on a Century of English Modernity (London, 1996), 161-76.
57. See, for example, Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago, 1992);
58. Walkowitz, "Male Vice and Feminist Virtue: Feminism and the Politics of Prostitution in Nineteenth Century Britain," History Workshop Journal 13 (1982): 77-93;
59. Mariana Valverde, "The Love of Finery: Fashion and the Fallen Woman in Nineteenth-Century Social Discourse," Victorian Studies 32 (1988-89): 169-88;
60. Deborah Thorn, "Free from Chains? The Image of Women's Labour in London, 1900-20," in David Feldman and Gareth Stedman Jones, eds., Metropolis London: Histories and Representations since 1800 (London, 1989), 85-99.
61. See A. H. Halsey, Trends in British Society since 1900 (London, 1972), 59;
62. see also Richard Soloway, Birth Control and the Population Question in England 1877-1930 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982);
63. Wally Seccombe, "Starting to Stop: Working-Class Fertility Decline in Britain," Past and Present 126 (1990): 151-88.
64. Royal Commission on Population (London, 1949), Cmd. 7695, 34.
65. See Lewis, Politics of Motherhood, chaps. 4-5.
66. Report of an Investigation into Maternal Mortality, 117.
67. Report of an Investigation into Maternal Mortality, 117, 118.
68. T. S. Eliot, "The Wasteland" [1922], in Collected Poems 1909-62 (London, 1964), 68;
69. see Victor Li, "T. S. Eliot and the Language of Hysteria," Dalhousie Review 77 (1997): 323-34.
70. See Lesley Hall and Roy Porter, The Facts of Life: The Creation of Sexual Knowledge in Britain, 1650-1950 (New Haven, Conn., 1995), chaps. 9-11;
71. Cate Haste, Rules of Desire: Sex in Britain; World War One to the Present (London, 1992), chap. 4.
72. On popular culture, see, for instance, Marcia Landy, British Genres (Princeton, N.J., 1991).
73. On the impact of the two world wars, see Haste, Rules of Desire;
74. Gillian Swanson, "'So Much Money and So Little to Spend It On': Morale, Consumption and Sexuality," in Susan Gledhill and Swanson, eds., Nationalising Femininity: Culture, Sexuality and British Cinema in the Second World War (Manchester, 1996), 70-90;
75. Marilyn Lake, "Female Desires: The Meaning of World War 2," Australian Historical Studies 21, no. 95 (October 1990): 267-84.
76. Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England, 1918-1951 (Oxford, 1998), 331;
77. see also Hall and Porter, Facts of Life; Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800 (New York, 1981);
78. Judy Giles, "'Playing Hard to Get': Working Class Women, Sexuality and Respectability in Britain, 1918-40,"
79. Penny Summerfield and Nicole Crockett, "'You Weren't Taught That with the Welding': Lessons in Sexuality in the Second World War," Women's History Review 1 (1992): 239-55, 435-54.
80. C. Neville Rolfe, "Sex-Delinquency," in H. Llewellyn Smith, et al., eds., The New Survey of London Life and Labour, 9 vols. (London, 1934), 9: 295-96.
81. Ada Chesterton, I Lived in a Slum (London, 1936), 119, 281. Ironically, of course, the same woman's mother was and eventually her daughter and granddaughter would be tarred with the same brush;
82. see, for example, the views of young working-class men of the late 1960s and 1970s collected in Paul E. Willis, Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs (London, 1977), 43-47.
83. Public Record Office, Kew, Ministry of Health (hereafter, PRO/MH), 71/21, Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, Violet Russell, "Report of an Investigation into the Question of Contraception and Abortion," 1937, 2.
84. Women's Group on Public Welfare, Our Towns: A Close-Up (London, 1943), 109;
85. see B. Seebohm Rowntree and G. R. Lavers, English Life and Leisure: A Social Study (London, 1951), 76, 4, 15.
86. See also Geoffrey Field, "Perspectives on the Working Class Family in Wartime Britain, 1939-45," International Labor and Working Class History 38 (1990): 3-28.
87. See Deborah Thom, Nice Girls and Rude Girls: Women Workers in World War 1 (London, 1998);
88. Angela Woollacott, On Her Their Lives Depend: Munitions Workers in the Great War (Berkeley, Calif., 1994).
89. Jane Lewis, "In Search of Real Equality: Women between the Wars," from Frank Gloversmith, ed., Class, Culture and Social Change (Brighton, 1980), 185-207;
90. see also Susan Kingsley Kent, Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain (Princeton, N.J., 1993).
91. See David Jarvis, "Mrs Maggs and Betty: The Conservative Appeal to Women Voters in the 1920s," Twentieth Century British History 5 (1994): 129-52;
92. Jarvis, "The Conservative Party and the Politics of Gender, 1900-39," in Martin Francis and Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, eds., The Conservatives and British Society (Cardiff, 1996), 172-93;
93. Michael Savage, The Dynamics of Working Class Politics (Cambridge, 1987);
94. Martin Durham, "Women and the British Union of Fascists," Immigrants and Minorities 8 (1989): 3-18. The Labour Party is discussed in detail below.
95. On work and masculininity, see Wally Seccombe, "Patriarchy Stabilized: The Construction of the Male Breadwinner Wage Norm in Nineteenth-Century Britain," Social History 11 (1986): 53-73;
96. Sonya Rose, "Gender Antagonism and Class Conflict: Exclusionary Strategies of Male Trade Unionists in Nineteenth-Century Britain," Social History 13 (1988): 191-208;
97. Keith McClelland, "Masculinity and the 'Representative Artisan' in Britain, 1850-80," in Michael Roper and John Tosh, eds., Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800 (London, 1991), 92-112.
98. On women's work and masculinity between the wars, see Miriam Glucksmann, Women Assemble (London, 1990);
99. Michael Savage, "Trade Unionism, Sex Segregation and the State: Women's Employment in 'New Industries' in Inter-War Britain," Social History 13 (1988): 209-28;
100. Paul Thompson, "Playing at Being Skilled Men: Factory Culture and Pride in Work Skills among Coventry Car Workers," Social History 13 (1988): 45-69.
101. Walter Greenwood, Love on the Dole (1933; rpt. edn., Harmondsworth, 1969), 17.
102. Margery Spring Rice, Working-Class Wives (1939; rpt. edn., London, 1981), 190.
103. George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (1937; rpt. edn., Harmondsworth, 1987), 18.
104. This echoes Julia Kristeva's comment that motherhood is "the threshold on which nature and culture confront one another." Kristeva, "The Maternal Body," m/f 5-6 (1981): 159;
105. see also Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis, 1989).
106. Vicky Randall, Women and Politics (London, 1987), 263.
107. Contemporary Medical Archives Centre, Wellcome Institute, London (hereafter, CMAC), SA/BCC/C26, National Abortion Committee, "Abortion and the Law," May 1976.
108. For a general review of these arguments, see Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Abortion and Women's Choice: The State, Sexuality and Reproductive Function (Boston, 1990).
109. Olive Banks, Faces of Feminism (New York, 1986), 193.
110. Juliet Mitchell, Women's Estate (New York, 1971), 101, 108, 109;
111. this section was originally published by Mitchell as "The Longest Revolution," New Left Review 40 (November-December 1966): 11-37.
112. See Ann Taylor Allen, Feminism and Motherhood in Germany, 1800-1914 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991), chap. 10.
113. See Women's Cooperative Guild, Maternity: Letters from Working Women (New York, 1915);
114. Maud Pember Reeves, Round about a Pound a Week (1913; rpt. edn., London, 1979), chaps. 12-13;
115. Ruth Hall, ed., Dear Dr Stopes: Sex in the 1920s (Harmondsworth, 1981), chap. 1.
116. The best accounts of this campaign can be found in Graves, Labour Women, 81-98;
117. Gillian Scott, Feminism and the Politics of Working Women: The Women's Co-operative Guild, 1880s to the Second World War (London, 1998), chap. 6;
118. Pedersen, Family, Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State, 160-69.
119. National Conference of Labour Women (hereafter, NCLW) (1925): 123.
120. Virginia Woolf, "Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street" [1924], in S. Dick, ed., The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf (London, 1985), 147;
121. on the question of respectability, see Regenia Gagnier, Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain 1832-1920 (Oxford, 1991), 60-62.
122. H. J. Drew Smythe, "Indications for the Induction of Premature Labour," British Medical Journal (London) (June 13, 1931): 1018-20;
123. Margaret Salmond, "Induction of Abortion," Lancet (London) (April 4, 1931): 745-47.
124. Eliot Slater and Maya Woodside, Patterns of Marriage: A Study of Marriage Relationships in the Urban Working-Classes (London, 1951), 151.
125. See Margaret Bone, Family Planning Services in England and Wales (London, 1973), 19;
126. C. M. Langford, Birth Control Practice and Marital Fertility in Great Britain (London, 1976).
127. Lisa D. Brush, "Motherhood and Feminist Politics," Signs 21 (1996): 430.
128. Quoted in Sheila Rowbotham, A New World for Women: Stella Browne - Socialist Feminist (London, 1977), 62.
129. Quoted in Rowbotham, New World for Women, 61.
130. See Wendy Z. Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936 (Cambridge, 1993), esp. chap. 7.
131. For British views of abortion practice in the Soviet Union, see Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation? 2 vols. (New York, 1936), 2: 812, 826-33;
132. M. I. Cole, "Women and Children," in Cole, ed., Twelve Studies in Soviet Russia (London, 1933), 183-85;
133. see also Sir Arthur Newsholme, Red Medicine: Socialized Health in Soviet Russia (New York, 1933);
134. Fannina W. Halle, Woman in Soviet Russia, Margaret M. Green, trans. (London, 1933).
135. Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 95.
136. Susan Pedersen, "The Failure of Feminism in the Making of the British Welfare State," Radical History Review 43 (1989): 104.
137. Mary Poovey, "The Abortion Question and the Death of Man," in Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott, eds., Feminists Theorize the Political (New York, 1992), 252.
138. Poovey, "Abortion Question and the Death of Man," 253.
139. Homi K. Bhabha, "Introduction," in Bhabha, ed., Nation and Narration (New York, 1990), 2;
140. see also Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York, 1994), introduction and chap. 4 in particular.
141. Bhabha, Location of Culture, 86, 212, 217.
142. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, 1990), 19.
143. This followed the publication of a letter by Malleson on abortion; see New Statesman and Nation (London), February 10, 1934.
144. On the formation of ALRA, see Alice Jenkins, Law for the Rich (London, 1960), 46-61.
145. CMAC, SA/ALR/1/2/1, Abortion Law Reform Association (hereafter, ALRA), Minutes, January 11, 1937, March 15, 1937, February 20, 1938, April 28, 1938.
146. See CMAC, SA/ALR/1/3/2-3, ALRA, Annual Reports, 1937-38, 1938-39.
147. Cited in April Carter, The Politics of Women's Rights (London, 1988), 89;
148. Martin Pugh, Women and the Women's Movement in Britain 1914-59 (London, 1992), 131-32.
149. See also Graves, Labour Women;
150. Smith, "Sex vs. Class";
151. Pedersen, Family, Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State;
152. Thane, "Women of the British Labour Party and Feminism";
153. Scott, Feminism and the Politics of Working Women, chap. 6.
154. See Neil Riddell, "The Catholic Church and the Labour Party, 1918-31," Twentieth Century British History 8 (1997): 179-82.
155. Quoted in Simms, "Abortion: The Myth of the Golden Age," 172.
156. See Denise Riley, "Am I That Name?" Feminism and the Category of "Women" in History (Minneapolis, 1988), chaps. 3-4.
157. Quoted in Haste, Rules of Desire, 66.
158. "Birth Control: A Plea for Careful Consideration," Labour Woman (London) 12 (March 1924): 34.
159. Quoted in NCLW (1928): 21-22.
160. Usborne, Politics of the Body, 158-59.
161. See Pedersen, Family, Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State.
162. On gender and socialist economic planning, see Black and Brooke, "Labour Party, Women and the Problem of Gender, 1951-66," 441-42;
163. Martin Francis, Ideas and Politics under Labour, 1945-1951: Building a New Britain (Manchester, 1997), chap. 7.
164. On family allowances, see John Macnichol, The Movement for Family Allowances, 1918-1945 (London, 1980);
165. Pedersen, Family, Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State, chap. 4.
166. NCLW (1928): 27, 26.
167. See, for example, National Conference of Labour Women, Reports on Maternal Mortality and the Maternity Services and Women in Industry (London, 1935).
168. See NCLW (1935); Labour Party Archives, National Labour Museum, Manchester (hereafter, LPA), Standing Joint Committee of Women's Industrial Organisations, Minutes, March 14, 1935.
169. "Protect the Nation's Mothers," Labour Woman 25 (August 1937): 120-21.
170. Women's Cooperative Guild, Annual Congress Report (1934): 21;
171. see also Scott, Feminism and the Politics of Working Women, 243-44.
172. CMAC, SA/ALR/1/2/1, ALRA, Minutes, January 24, 1936.
173. CMAC, SA/ALR/1/3/1, ALRA, Annual Report, 1936-37.
174. See Rowbotham, New World for Women, sect. 4.
175. Browne, "Right to Abortion," 13, 40.
176. Janet Chance, The Case for the Reform of the Abortion Laws (London, 1936), 13.
177. Chance, Case for the Reform of the Abortion Laws, 11.
178. Margot Edgecombe, "Marital Difficulties and Abortion Law Reform," in ALRA, Backstreet Surgery (London, 1939), 15;
179. Chance quoted in Liverpool Daily Post, December 3, 1936.
180. New Statesman, October 17, 1936.
181. Chance, Case for the Reform of the Abortion Laws, 11.
182. CMAC, SA/ALR/1/3/1, ALRA, Annual Report, 1936-37.
183. Chance, Case for the Reform of the Abortion Laws, 12.
184. "The Law of Abortion," Lancet, June 13, 1936.
185. The Times (London), December 19, 1931.
186. The Times, July 1, 1936.
187. The Times, July 19, 1938.
188. The Times, July 19, 1938.
189. The Times, July 20, 1938.
190. Law Reports: 1 King's Bench (1939), Central Criminal Court, Rex v. Bourne, July 18, 1938: 688-89.
191. The Times, July 19, 1938.
192. The Times, July 20, 1939.
193. Edgecombe, "Marital Difficulties and Abortion Law Reform," 15.
194. Rex v. Bourne, July 18, 1938, 694-95; Algernon Charles Swinburne, "Dolores" [1866], Poems and Ballads (London, 1918), 1: 154-55.
195. PRO/MH 71/30, Ministry of Health and Home Office, Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, 1939, Majority Report, Conclusions, paragraphs 6, 14; Thurtle contributed a dissenting minority report, which proposed "social" abortions only for women with high fertility rates, more specifically, those women who had already had four pregnancies, in other words, women who had demonstrated their commitment to traditional family life. See PRO/MH 71/30, Ministry of Health and Home Office, Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, 1939, Minority Report.
196. PRO/MH 71/23, Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, East Midlands Working Women's Association, Memorandum, November 16, 1937; resolutions in favor of abortion law reform were also received from a number of Women's Sections of local Labour parties and chapters of the Women's Cooperative Guild.
197. Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, 1939, Majority Report, paragraph 230.
198. PRO/MH 71/21, Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, Oral Evidence of Abortion Law Reform Association Representatives (J. Chance, S. Browne, J. Malleson, and G. Thesiger), October 13, 1937.
199. PRO/MH 71/21, Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, Abortion Law Reform Association, Memorandum, AC Paper, No. 13.
200. Oral Evidence of Abortion Law Reform Association Representatives (J. Chance, S. Browne, J. Malleson, and G. Thesiger), October 13, 1937.
201. PRO/MH 71/22, Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, Midwives Institute, Memorandum, n.d. [1937].
202. As Lara Marks has recently shown, birth control was a particularly strong issue in Kensington; see Metropolitan Maternity: Maternal and Infant Welfare Services in Early Twentieth Century London (Amsterdam, 1996), 148-50.
203. PRO/MH 71/21, Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, Violet Russell, "Report of an Investigation into the Question of Contraception and Abortion," 1937, 1.
204. PRO/MH 71/25, Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, Oral Evidence of East Midlands Working Women's Association Representatives (I. Roche, E. Oakes), 7.
205. Oral Evidence of East Midlands Working Women's Association Representatives (I. Roche, E. Oakes).
206. Russell, "Report of an Investigation into the Question of Contraception and Abortion," 1937, 2.
207. Russell, "Report of an Investigation into the Question of Contraception and Abortion," 1937, 2.
208. Russell, "Report of an Investigation into the Question of Contraception and Abortion," 1937, 3.
209. Russell, "Report of an Investigation into the Question of Contraception and Abortion," 1937, 6.
210. Oral Evidence of East Midlands Working Women's Association Representatives (I. Roche, E. Oakes).
211. Oral Evidence of East Midlands Working Women's Association Representatives (I. Roche, E. Oakes).
212. PRO/MH 71/23, Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, East Midlands Working Women's Association, Memorandum, November 16, 1937.
213. Oral Evidence of East Midlands Working Women's Association Representatives (I. Roche, E. Oakes).
214. PRO/MH 71/21, Abortion Law Reform Association, Memorandum, AC Paper, No. 13.
215. Oral Evidence of Abortion Law Reform Association Representatives (J. Chance, S. Browne, J. Malleson, and G. Thesiger), October 13, 1937.
216. PRO/MH 71/21, Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, Oral Evidence of Stella Browne, n.d. [1937].
217. Oral Evidence of East Midlands Working Women's Association Representatives (I. Roche, E. Oakes).
218. Oral Evidence of East Midlands Working Women's Association Representatives (I. Roche, E. Oakes).
219. Oral Evidence of East Midlands Working Women's Association Representatives (I. Roche, E. Oakes), 11-12.
220. Marks, Metropolitan Maternity, 68;
221. see also Sally Alexander, "Becoming a Woman in the 1920s and 1930s," and "Memory, Generation and History: Two Women's Lives in the Inter-War Years," in Becoming a Woman and Other Essays in 19th and 20th Century Feminist History (London, 1994), 203-24, 231-42.
222. Ferdynand Zweig, Women's Life and Labour (London, 1952), 66.
223. Davidoff, "Regarding Some 'Old Husbands' Tales,'" 183.
224. On these points, see Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein, Women's Two Roles: Home and Work (1956, 2d edn., London, 1968);
225. Klein, Britain's Married Women Workers (London, 1965);
226. Michael Young and Peter Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London (Harmondsworth, 1957);
227. Norman Dennis, Fernando Henriques, and Clifford Slaughter, Coal Is Our Life (London, 1956);
228. Liz Heron, ed., Truth, Dare or Promise: Girls Growing Up in the Fifties (London, 1985);
229. Birmingham Feminist History Group, "Feminism as Femininity in the Nineteen-Fifties," Feminist Review 3 (1979): 48-65.
230. PRO/MH 71/30, Ministry of Health and Home Office, Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, 1939, paragraph 230.
231. Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, 1939, paragraphs 235, 301.
232. Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, 1939, paragraphs 225, 275.
233. Roberts, Civilization without Sexes, 10.
234. Irene Costera and Baukje Finns, "How Bodies Come to Matter: An Interview with Judith Butler," Signs 23 (1998): 279.
235. Bhabha, "Introduction," 2.
236. Butler, Gender Trouble, 19;
237. Browne, "Right to Abortion," 31.