Women's Health [antikvár]

Preface In 1921, family-planning pioneer Marie Stopes started a huge social trend in the UK when she opened the country's first birth-control clinic. At a time when Victorian values were still dominant, she was the first to offer women choice about child-bearing, introducing the notion that sex did not have to be for procreation. She also promoted the idea that child-spacing could give women time to recover from pregnancy and birth, and improve their health and welfare. Her stance shook society, attracting opposition from both the church and the medical community. At one point, her touring contraceptive publicity caravan was burnt down by an ardent opponent, and her controversial writings on sex and love resulted in lawsuits and heavily publicized trials. Nevertheless, an irreversible trend had begun - women from all over the UK began to visit her central London clinic, which is still open today, and they also secretly used her mail-order service for diaphragms and special contraceptive sponges (which were to be soaked in olive oil). The era of choice had begun, and continues today. In March 1996, the charity Marie Stopes International celebrated its 75th anniversary, having helped millions of women in the intervening years to take control of their fertility. In the past decade the organization has also moved with the times to offer other services that women desperately need from cervical screening and gynaecology to infertility diagnosis and pre-conception screening. Marie Stopes International has also turned its attention to men's responsibility, setting up a nationwide vasectomy programme and putting male health screening on offer. From the mid-1970s, the Marie Stopes philosophy of planned parenthood moved overseas. There are now reproductive health programmes running in 25 countries, from Bosnia to Bangladesh and Nicaragua to Malawi. Every year more than one million couples benefit from the human right and health rationale of being able to plan their families, but there are still 350 million couples worldwide who want to use contraception but do not have access to modern methods. Furthermore, half a million women still die every year as a result of pregnancy and childbirth, so despite our progress since the 1920s there is still a huge need to raise awareness and provide good-quality women's health services. Marie Stopes International hopes this book will go some way towards helping women understand more about their bodies and improve their health as a result.