International Women's Day: so much achieved, such a long way to go
But surely you did not expect us to win in the first round?? My goodness! when I remember the fights for Contraception, even in my time, long after the mid-nineteenth century initial struggles - not to mention the first years after a public demand for legalized abortion by qualified persons.--! also, the fights for suffrage, divorce reform, etc.
Stella Browne to Alice Jenkins of the Abortion Law Reform Association, 31 Aug 1953
But what a lot there still is to do!'
The same to the same, 30 Mar 1955
These statements still seem to me to be valid, 50+ years on. Stella Browne was a woman in her 70s when she wrote these letters, a veteran of the suffrage movement, World War I pacificism, the early years of British Communism, the birth control movement, the struggle for abortion law reform, etc, suffering from severe rheumatism and failing sight, stuck in rather uncongenial provincial circumstances, yet neither despaired nor thought the battle was over.