ABSTRACT
The separate legal personality of the wife began to emerge in the late 19th century with such statutes as the Married Women’s Property Act 1882 (although cynics always regarded this as a vehicle for protecting the family of the numerous and newly prosperous Victorian entrepreneurs against the bankruptcy of their paterfamilias rather than advancing the property interests of women as such) and developed throughout the 20th century, as women gained more and more independence. This ultimately took their uninhibited decision making even as far as interference in what was originally seen as the core purpose of marriage, the provision of children, in the recognition of the wife’s right to take unilateral decisions in abortion, including to abort the husband’s child against his express opposition (see Paton v British Pregnancy Advisory Service [1979] QB 276, where a husband was refused an injunction to stop such an operation).
