Diane Munday, who helped secure the 1967 Abortion Act, is still campaigning for wider reproductive rights at the age of 94. The co-founder of the British Pregnancy Advice Service was a leading member of the Abortion Law Reform Association and is a patron of Humanists UK.
Munday recalls that after the 1967 Act passed, she told colleagues she was only drinking half a glass of champagne because the job was only half done. She notes that 50 years later, women were still going to prison for ending pregnancies outside the legal framework.
Her activism is driven by personal experience: in 1961, after knowing a woman who died from a backstreet abortion, she raised £90 for a safe termination in Harley Street. She says the injustice of that situation has driven her for decades.
In the 1960s, she built public support for reform by speaking to groups like the Women's Institute, where she shared her own abortion story. She found that many women privately admitted to having had abortions but had never spoken about it.
In June 2024, parliament passed an amendment to the crime and policing bill, tabled by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, to end the criminal investigation and prosecution of women who terminate their pregnancies. Munday says this is a significant advance but not enough.
She continues to call for full decriminalisation, including removing the requirement for two doctors to sign off. She follows US news with concern, noting that the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022 shows a society going backwards.
