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

这种避孕药的引入和1967年的《堕胎法》遭到了苏格兰医学界的敌意，他们不愿承担这一责任。考虑到宗教对苏格兰社会的持久影响，以及终结医生生命的道德冲突，这并不令人惊讶。1967年之前，苏格兰还没有全国性的堕胎法，医生迄今一直与堕胎脱节。然而，这种不情愿似乎与1926年在苏格兰建立的节育诊所相矛盾，该诊所由医疗专业人士运营，并得到了镇议会的支持。英国的节育诊所受到了历史学家的极大关注，优生学和女权活动家玛丽·斯托普斯的节育诊所在多大程度上受到了优生学的影响，目前还存在争议。黛博拉·科恩坚持认为，诊所将优生学的信仰置于帮助所有人的愿望之下，简·凯里和理查德·索洛威强调，优生学和女权主义并不是对立的，而是密不可分的，因为诊所试图推动特定的社会阶层和种族的发展。相反，苏格兰的首批节育诊所在很大程度上被忽视了。只有克里斯汀·埃利奥特研究过这些，以证明二战期间苏格兰曾有过一场充满活力的妇女运动。同样，Annmarie Hughes关于这一时期的另一项重要研究讨论了节育与妇女在工人运动中的激进主义的关系，Sue Innes的工作简要地承认，在妇女协会的运动中讨论了节育问题。罗杰·戴维森在这一时期对苏格兰堕胎的唯一研究完全依赖于高等法院的审判。关于这些话题和二十世纪早期苏格兰优生学的更广泛的历史被遗漏了。这是惊人的，因为苏格兰与英国其他地区不同，考虑到苏格兰在这一时期缺乏全国性的堕胎立法，以及独特的法律制度和医疗、公民和性文化。此外，随着对国家衰落的担忧在国际上盛行，苏格兰尤其面临着出生率下降、婴儿死亡率上升和因战争期间苏格兰不成比例的死亡率而导致的寡妇数量增加的问题。苏格兰是英国贸易和军事的关键，造船业也是如此。这个项目偏离了现有的研究，在人口政策而不是女权主义行动中考虑堕胎和节育。它通过审查二十世纪初苏格兰关于堕胎、节育和优生学的论述，以及优生学在多大程度上反映在有关生殖健康的政策和倡议中，特别是在节育诊所中，来解决目前的差距。在这样做需要揭示文本背后更广泛的动机的地方，福柯的话语分析将被结合使用，并与“逆颗粒阅读”相结合。我将使用英国报纸档案馆的报纸来研究关于这些问题的公共话语，苏格兰国家记录(NRS)中的柯克会议记录有助于追踪苏格兰教会内部关于这些问题的不断变化的话语，这些话语具有极大的影响力。为了调查女性的观点，我将使用NRS提供的与爱丁堡女公民协会有关的文件，该协会致力于节育等问题，并与其他苏格兰妇女组织密切合作。对于法律话语，将使用关于刑事堕胎的书面法庭审判，以及来自NRS和地方当局档案的与堕胎和节育政策有关的政府文件(地方和国家)。然后，我将探索威康收藏馆、米切尔图书馆和RCPSG中著名妇科医生的作品和通信，以调查苏格兰医学界对优生学的态度，以及位于NHS大格拉斯哥和克莱德档案馆的苏格兰节育诊所的记录，以检查它们的起源和工作方式。

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.