‘Women have to fight for what they want’: UK campaigner’s 60-year unfinished battle for abortion rights
Source: The Guardian
When the 1967 Abortion Act cleared parliament, marking one of the most significant steps forward for women’s rights in history, Diane Munday was among the campaigners raising a glass of champagne on the terrace of the House of Commons.
“I’m only drinking a half a glass,” she told her colleagues at the time, “because the job is only half done.”
And, she was right. “Fifty years later, women were still going to prison,” says Munday, who co-founded the British Pregnancy Advice Service. She was also a leading member of the Abortion Law Reform Association during the 1960s and 1970s and is a patron of Humanists UK.
The 94-year-old campaigner still spends most of her days at work in her home office, where evidence of her passion is clear: from the bookshelf stacked with titles about abortion, to the notes tacked above her desk, to the filing cabinet stuffed with decades of history.
When the 1967 Abortion Act cleared parliament, marking one of the most significant steps forward for women’s rights in history, Diane Munday was among the campaigners raising a glass of champagne on the terrace of the House of Commons.
“I’m only drinking a half a glass,” she told her colleagues at the time, “because the job is only half done.”
And, she was right. “Fifty years later, women were still going to prison,” says Munday, who co-founded the British Pregnancy Advice Service. She was also a leading member of the Abortion Law Reform Association during the 1960s and 1970s and is a patron of Humanists UK.
The 94-year-old campaigner still spends most of her days at work in her home office, where evidence of her passion is clear: from the bookshelf stacked with titles about abortion, to the notes tacked above her desk, to the filing cabinet stuffed with decades of history.