ABSTRACT
ABORTION As the film by Mike Leigh entitled Vera Drake (2005) sadly illustrates, before the Abortion Act of 1967 workingclass women were often forced to turn to the so-called back-street abortionists to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Although the film is a work of fiction, it powerfully conveys the tawdry atmosphere of illegal abortion, and the desperation felt by women who were pregnant yet wished they were not. Many women also attempted to terminate pregnancies themselves. In Vera Drake the subject is sympathetically treated; however, backstreet abortion was sometimes a murky underworld of petty profiteering from other people’s misery. It was also very dangerous. A variety of means could be used to terminate or to try to terminate a pregnancy, sometimes resulting in death to women through internal injuries. Some women died or were badly injured when attempting self-termination. These brutal facts made the hypocrisy of British law all the more appalling. For, despite its illegality, wealthier women could get an abortion using private doctors. In the fiction feature film Alfie (1966), based on the novel by Bill Naughton, a woman felt compelled to have an abortion to avoid the shame of being found out following a sexual liaison with Alfie. And Alfie himself,
played by Michael Caine, was able to walk away, saddened by the termination, but not forced to endure it. It was this state of affairs that the Abortion Bill of 1967 sought to correct. Steered through parliament by the young Liberal MP David Steel, the Abortion Bill faced many powerful moral objections over the rights of the foetus, and the still powerful condemnations of sex outside of marriage. The Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC) and the Roman Catholic Church were particularly prominent opponents of liberalised abortion laws, and indifferent to the torment of pregnant women who did not want to have a child. Yet the Bill prevailed, and the Act came into force the following year.
