Abortion Provider Changes Name Over Marie Stopes Eugenics Link

18 November 2020

A leading abortion provider has changed its name in order to break ties with Marie Stopes, the controversial birth control pioneer who believed in the creation of a super race.

Marie Stopes International, which provides contraception and abortions to women and girls in 37 countries, is now known as MSI Reproductive Choices.

MSI Reproductive Choices said Stopes’ legacy has become “deeply entangled” with her views on eugenics and wanted to address the “understandable misapprehensions” that the charity had a meaningful connection to her.

Simon Cooke, Chief Executive of MSI Reproductive Choices, said: “The name of the organisation has been a topic of discussion for many years and the events of 2020 have reaffirmed that changing our name is the right decision”.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54970977

Marie Stopes (1880–1958) shook the world. She wrote the best-selling sex-manual for women ‘Married Love’ in 1916 (which took 2 years to find a publisher willing to print copies) and was a controversial birth control pioneer. On a darker note, she also corresponded with Hitler and believed in the creation of a super race.

You can read more about Marie Stopes’ life and achievements in Howard Falcon-Lang’s fascinating article ‘The secret life of Dr Marie Stopes’ (23 August 2010) online at BBC News.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11040319