Thorny entanglements: feminism, eugenics and the Abortion Law Reform Association's (ALRA) campaign for safe, accessible abortion in Britain, 1936-1967

Med Hist. 2024 Mar 18:1-23. doi: 10.1017/mdh.2024.4. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTFor the past two decades anti-abortionists in the Global North have been aggressively instrumentalising disability in order to undermine women's social autonomy, asserting, falsely, there is an insuperable conflict between disability rights and reproductive rights. The utilisation of disability in struggles over abortion access is not new, it has a history dating back to the interwar era. Indeed, decades before anti-abortionists' campaign, feminists invoked disability to expand access to safe abortion. This paper examines the feminist eugenics in the first organisation dedicated to liberalising restrictive abortion laws, the Abortion Law Reform Association (ALRA), established in England in 1936. ALRA played a vital role in the passage of the Abortion Act 1967 (or the Act) that greatly expanded the grounds for legal abortion, a hugely important gain for women in Britain and beyond seeking legal, safe abortions. In addition, the Act permitted eugenic abortion, which also had transnational effects: within a decade, jurisdictions in numerous Commonwealth countries passed abortion laws that incorporated the Act's eugenics clause, sometimes verbatim. This essay analyses ALRA's role in codifying eugenics in the Abortion Act 1967 and argues that from the outset, ALRA was simultaneously a feminist and eugenist association. Initially, ALRA prioritized their feminist commitment to 'voluntary motherhood' i...
Source: Medical History - Category: History of Medicine Authors: Source Type: research