International Women’s Day

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, for securing this timely debate. I will speak about an issue that has had a profound influence on women’s social and economic well-being, as well as on their physical health and happiness. That issue is contraception, which has enhanced women’s rights as a whole, as well as their reproductive rights, both nationally and internationally. I am so pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, mentioned family planning. I declare an interest as president of Brook Advisory Centres and a patron of the FPA and Women and Children First. I realise that many men have supported contraception but many of the early pioneers were women. How brave those women were in those days. Now, of course, there were many ancient ways of trying to prevent conception—for example: wearing asparagus; applying medicated steam to fumigate the vagina; or using a pessary of crocodile dung and honey. Crocodile dung was not readily available in north-west London or New York, so it is as well that women set about being more practical and brave, as I said. Annie Besant, in 1876 defended an American booklet on population, The Fruits of Philosophy. She had many battles with the law. In the early 1900s, Margaret Sanger, an American nurse, promoted birth control methods and was indicted and convicted as a public nuisance. Marie Stopes, after many battles, opened the first birth control clinic in the British Empire in Holloway, London. Working-class women flocked to it—2,000 attended a rally that same year. Affiliated clinics were opened one by one. In 1924, Margaret Lloyd and a friend raised £100 to set up a clinic in Ladbroke Grove. They were moved by pity that few uneducated or poor people had access to family planning. Prejudice against women taking control of their fertility was rife. Some women who attended the early clinics had to be secretive about using a method of contraception. One woman in the Midlands told a family-planning worker that she had to hide her contraceptive cap "up the chimney"—I do not think that was a euphemism for part of her anatomy. After the Second World War, contraceptive advice through Family Planning Association clinics was at first provided only to married women. Clinics asked unmarried women to come back after their honeymoon. Others were asked to bring a letter from their vicar or family doctor to prove that they were about to be married. Woolworths did a great trade in small brass curtain rings which women wore as wedding rings when visiting a clinic. To return to the bold Marie Stopes, letters to her now published reveal the depth of fear and ignorance about sexuality and birth control. Bertrand Russell was told before his first marriage that the use of contraception had made his father epileptic. A doctor was reprimanded for helping a woman who, in the eyes of a critic, did not belong to the "Society of Confirmed Virgins". Marie Stopes herself did not know it all. Her advice to a woman who believed she had gonorrhoea was: ""You acquired it quite innocently from a school lavatory, the seats of which are very dangerous and have been the cause of many wrecked lives"." She recorded that one woman took 12 Beecham Powders a day and another gunpowder to try to induce an abortion. The horrors of back-street abortions are well known: how much better to have enlightened education and services. Contraceptive and sexual health services must be protected and developed both nationally and internationally. The Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV, chaired by my noble friend Lady Gould, who unfortunately cannot be here today, published a report providing compelling evidence of the economic and social case for contraceptive services, preventing unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. The Department of Health has committed to a three-year investment in contraceptive and abortion services, yet commissioning structures, the building of strategic partnerships and investment in prevention still require more development. Can my noble friend the Leader of the House restate her support for services which are so essential to the health and well-being of women and families?