Marie Stopes - Work in Family Planning

Work in Family Planning

In 1917, before he'd met Marie Stopes, Humphrey Roe offered to endow a birth control clinic attached to St Mary's Hospital in Manchester. He had set conditions that all the patients be married and that there were to be no abortions, but the offer was declined. This was a serious issue for Roe, so after their marriage he and Stopes planned to open a clinic for poor mothers in London.

Margaret Sanger had attempted to run a birth control clinic in New York, but it was closed down by the police. In 1920 she proposed opening a clinic in London, which spurred Stopes to act more constructively, though Sanger's plan never materialized. Stopes resigned her lectureship at the University College of London at the end of 1920 to concentrate on the clinic and three months later she and Roe opened the Mothers' Clinic at 61, Marlborough Road, Holloway, North London on 17 March 1921. The clinic, run by midwives, offered mothers birth control advice and taught them the use of a cervical cap.

Later that year Stopes had founded the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress, a support organization for the clinic.

In 1925 the Mothers' Clinic moved to Central London, where it remains to this day. Stopes gradually built up a small network of clinics across Britain, working tirelessly to fund them. She opened clinics in Leeds in April, 1934; Aberdeen in October, 1934; Belfast in October, 1936; Cardiff in October, 1937, and Swansea in January, 1943.

Stopes and her fellow family planning pioneers around the globe, like Dora Russell, played a major role in breaking down taboos about sex and increasing knowledge, pleasure and improved reproductive health. In 1930 the National Birth Control Council was formed.