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

引入避孕药和1967年的《堕胎法》遭到苏格兰医学界的敌意，他们不愿承担这一责任。这并不奇怪，考虑到宗教对苏格兰社会的持久影响，以及结束生命给医生带来的伦理冲突，这些医生迄今为止与堕胎无关，因为苏格兰在1967年之前不存在国家堕胎立法。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，这些诊所由医疗专业人员经营，并得到镇议会的支持。英国的同行受到了历史学家的极大关注，优生学和妇女权利活动家玛丽·斯特普斯（Marie Stopes）的节育诊所在多大程度上受到优生学的影响，这一点存在争议。虽然黛博拉·科恩坚持认为，诊所将优生学信仰从属于帮助所有人的愿望，但简·凯里和理查德·索洛维强调，优生学和女权主义并不是对立的，而是不可分割的，因为诊所寻求推进特定的社会阶层和种族。相反，苏格兰的第一家节育诊所在很大程度上被忽视了。只有克里斯汀·艾略特（Kristin Elliott）研究过这些，以证明两次世界大战之间的苏格兰有一场充满活力的妇女运动。同样，安玛丽·休斯对这一时期的另一项主要研究讨论了生育控制与劳工运动中妇女激进主义的关系，苏·英尼斯的工作简要地承认，在妇女行会的运动中讨论了生育控制。罗杰·戴维森（Roger Davidson）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20世纪早期苏格兰优生学的更广泛的历史是缺失的。这是惊人的，因为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，苏格兰与英国其他地区不同。此外，随着对国家衰落的担忧在国际上普遍存在，特别是苏格兰——它的造船业对英国的贸易和军事至关重要——正面临着出生率下降、婴儿死亡率上升和战争期间苏格兰不成比例的死亡率导致的大量寡妇。这个项目偏离了现有的研究，将堕胎和生育控制与-à-vis人口政策相比较，而不是女权主义行动。本报告通过审查20世纪初苏格兰关于堕胎、生育控制和优生学的论述，以及优生学在与生殖健康有关的政策和倡议中，特别是在生育控制诊所中反映到何种程度，解决了目前的差距。如果这样做需要揭示文本背后更广泛的动机，福柯式话语分析将与“逆行阅读”结合使用。我将使用英国报纸档案馆的报纸来研究这些问题的公共话语，苏格兰国家记录（NRS）中的教会会议记录对于跟踪苏格兰教会内部对这些问题的变化非常有用，这些问题非常有影响力。为了调查女性的观点，我将使用国家统计局与爱丁堡妇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。关于法律论述，将使用国家统计局和地方当局档案中关于堕胎和生育控制政策的法庭审判文件（地方和国家）。然后，我将探索威康收藏，米切尔图书馆和RCPSG中杰出妇科医生的作品和通信，以调查苏格兰医疗界对优生学的态度，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，以检查其起源和工作。

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.