Fact Sheet #10: SEX-SIN FEMALES

Intent on preserving the Patriarchal system in Britain, the male dominated establishment and the Christian Church controlled every aspect of female sexuality in the 1940’s, the 1950’s and the 1960’s.

Under the guise of protecting young females from themselves, all access to sexual knowledge was denied. Sex education wasn’t taught in schools or mentioned in the home.

Girls were rarely told the facts of life, some thought the first signs of body hair and breasts were indications of abnormality.

And a frightened majority believed they were bleeding to death when mensturation began.

Lack of sexual knowledge produced casualties, foremost amongst them were girls. The religious-pious equated female sexual ignorance with innocence. Schools restricted teenage girls to the study of nature and the reproductive cycle of plant, and parental guidance was often nothing more than the immortal phrase ‘Don’t get into trouble.’

The secrecy surrounding issues of female sexuality had dramatic consequences for hundreds of thousands of girls who got pregnant without benefit of a wedding ring.

Single girls were denied the right, the knowledge and the means to avoid pregnancy and faced the agonising decision on whether or not to end the pregnancy in the knowledge that abortion incurred a prison sentence, possible sterility and/or death.

Regardless of the circumstances abortion was illegal, even for a suicidal rape victim. Girls risked a painful death if they broke the law and resorted to a back street abortion that went wrong, or survived and were caught then sent to prison .

A majority of unsupported unmarried mothers wanted to keep their babies but they were in an extremely precarious position because Moral Welfare Workers had their own agenda when infant adoption was the only cure for married infertility.

The Christian Church operated 80% of Britain’s Unmarried Mothers Homes. Girls paid to be accommodated, were assigned a Moral Welfare Worker, denied their rights, lied to and routinely coerced out of their babies… to create instant families for infertile married couples.

IN MEMORY

Treating unmarried mothers as breeders and using their babies as commodities left a majority of mothers so deeply scarred they never fully recovered.
None of them survived unscathed. Some didn’t survive at all they took their own lives.

This page is dedicated to the memory of Jenny – 14 year old mother of James.

Copyright © Patricia Basquill, 2002 - 2008