A conspiracy of silence: abortion, birth control and eugenics in early twentieth-century Scotland

The introduction of the pill and the Abortion Act of 1967 were received with hostility by the Scottish medical community, who were reluctant to take on this responsibility. This was unsurprising, considering the enduring influence of religion on Scottish society and the ethical conflict ending life posed for doctors who had hitherto disassociated themselves from abortions as national abortion legislation was non-existent in Scotland prior to 1967. Yet, this reluctance seemingly contradicts the establishment of birth control clinics in Scotland in 1926, operated by medical professionals and supported by town councils.The English counterparts have received much attention from historians, and debate exists around the extent to which the birth control clinics of Marie Stopes, a campaigner for eugenics and women's rights, were influenced by eugenics. While Deborah Cohen maintains that clinics subordinated eugenic beliefs to a desire to help all, Jane Carey and Richard Soloway underline that eugenics and feminism were not antithetical, but rather inseparable as clinics sought to advance specific social classes and races.

Conversely, Scotland's first birth control clinics have largely been overlooked. Only Kristin Elliott has examined these to prove interwar Scotland had a vibrant women's movement. Similarly, the other major study on this period by Annmarie Hughes discusses birth control in relation to women's activism within the labour movement, and Sue Innes's work briefly acknowledges that birth control was discussed in campaigns in women's guilds. The only study on abortion in Scotland in this period by Roger Davidson relies solely on High Court trials. A wider history of these topics and of eugenics in early twentieth-century Scotland is missing. This is striking, because Scotland differed from the rest of Britain considering Scotland's lack of national abortion legislation in this period and distinctive legal system and medical, civic and sexual culture. Furthermore, with fears about national decline being rife internationally, Scotland especially - pivotal to Britain's trade and military with its shipbuilding industry - was facing a declining birth rate, a rise in infant mortality rates and a high number of widows resulting from the disproportionate Scottish mortality rate during the war. This project deviates from existing studies by considering abortion and birth control vis-à-vis population policy rather than feminist action. It addresses current gaps by examining discourses on abortion, birth control and eugenics in early twentieth-century Scotland and to what extent eugenics was reflected in policies and initiatives concerned with reproductive health, particularly in birth control clinics. Where doing so requires uncovering broader motivations behind texts, Foucauldian discourse analysis will be used combined with 'reading against the grain'. I will examine public discourses on these issues using newspapers from the British Newspaper Archive, and kirk session records from the National Records of Scotland (NRS) are useful to track changing discourses on these issues within the Scottish churches, which were extremely influential. To investigate women's views, I will use documents from the NRS relating to the Edinburgh Women Citizens' Association, which was dedicated to issues like birth control and worked closely with other Scottish women's organisations. For legal discourses, documented court trials concerning criminal abortions and government documents (local and national) relating to abortion and birth control policies from the NRS and local authority archives will be used. I will then explore works of and correspondence between prominent gynaecologists in the Wellcome Collection, Mitchell Library and the RCPSG to investigate attitudes towards eugenics in Scotland's medical community,& records from Scottish birth control clinics located in the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Archive to examine thier origins & workings.