Stella Browne May 31, 2011

“In 1937, the middle-aged “Miss” Stella Browne, when giving evidence to the UK Government’s Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, delivered a thunderbolt – she told the committee that she knew from personal experience that abortion was not necessarily fatal or injurious. No record was made of the horrified silence with which such a personal statement must have been greeted. Abortion was illegal and certainly not something that a “respectable” unmarried, educated woman would need to resort to. But Stella Browne (1880-1955), a passionate advocate of birth control, legalised abortion and greater sexual freedom for women, was no shrinking violet.”

Read on at the Times Higher.

All 47 issues of The Freewoman, the journal she contributed to, are digitised and can be accessed at the Modernist Journals Project.