Attitudes to Abortion in the Era of Reform

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Wamen’sHistoryReview § Routledge Vol. 20, No. 2, April 2011, pp. 283—298 § Taylorwmcmup Attitudes to Abortion in the Era of Reform: evidence from the Abortion Law Reform Association correspondence Emma L. Jones This article examines letters sent by members of the generalpublic to the Abortion Law Reform Association (ALRA) in the decade immediately before the 1967 Abortion Act. It shows how a voluntary organisation, in their aim ofsupporting a specific cause of unclear legality, called forth correspondence from those in need. In detailing the personal predicaments of those facing an unwantedpregrzarzcy, this body of correspon~ dence was readily deployed by ALRA in their eﬁ‘orts to mobilise support for abortion law reform, thus exercising a politicalfunction. A close examination of the content of the letters and the epistolary strategies adopted by their writers reveals that as much as they were a lobbying tool for changes in abortion law, these letters were discursively shaped by debates surrounding that very reform. Emma Iones is a Wellcome Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester. She received her Ph.D. from the University of London in 2007 for her thesis ‘Abortion in England, 1861—1967’. Alongside forthcoming publications on the history of abortion and family planning, she is the author with John Pickstone of The Quest for Public Health in Manchester: the industrial city, the NHS and the recent history (Carnegie, 2008), and with Stephanie Snow ongairist the Odds: black and minority ethnic clinicians and Manchester 1948 to 200.9 (Carnegie, 2010). She is currently working on a history of premenstrual syndrome in twentieth—century Britain. Work on this essay was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (Award Reference: PTA—026—27—1810). Correspondence to: Emma Jones, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester, Simon Building, Brunswick Street, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. Email: [email protected] ISSN O961~2025 (print)/ISSN 1747—583X (0nline)/11/020283—16 © 2011 Taylor 8K Francis DOI: 10.1080/09612025.2011.556323.

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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements The cataloguing of the Manchester Medical Collections was made possible by a grant from the fund for Research Resources for Medical History set up by the Wellcome Trust. We are indebted to the Wellcome Trust for its continuing support for the history of medicine in The University of Manchester. Many colleagues and friends have helped to bring this volume to completion.We are grateful to all the contributors for their patience and forbearance during the long editing process. Dr Dorothy Clayton guided us expertly through the production of the volume and took much of the pain from that process. Many of the papers feature images taken from the JRUL collections and we would like to thank Carol Burrows for help with the selection and production of these illustrations. We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce images: L'Institut Pasteur, p. 102; Tameside Local Studies and Archives Centre, Central Library, Ashton-under-Lyne, pp. 89, 105; The Royal Society, p. 159; The Medical Illustration Unit, Manchester Royal Infirmary, pp. 170, 172, 177, 178, 180; Anthony Bentley, Scientific Photographer, Faculty of Life Sciences, The University of Manchester, pp. 217, 218, 219 and 220. All other illustrations were taken from the collections held by the John Rylands University Library. John Pickstone Stella Butler 7 Contributors Julie Anderson is a Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of Science,Technology and Medicine and the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at The University of Manchester. Her areas of research include the history of disability and she has published on physical disability and war.
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