By Helen Donoghue and Janet Brewer
Free contraception and abortion on demand was one of the first four demands of the women’s liberation movement; these were established at the Ruskin conference of 1970. It was recognition that until women could control their own fertility, they would never control their own lives. And knowing whether you were pregnant or not was a crucial part of that control. In 1972, women in Merseyside started to offer free pregnancy testing; by April 1973, Bolton, Cambridge and South London WLM groups had followed suit. *
Testing kit used by the Bristol Women’s Centre. From the Museum of Contraception and Abortion website
In 1973, Ellen and John Malos offered the use of a semi-basement room as a Bristol Women’s Centre. This was in their home at 11 Waverley Road in Redland. There was a desk in a sunny window, a bed by the wall, a duplicator for newsletters, a filing cabinet, a place to make coffee and bookshelves for our growing reference library. A rota of volunteers answered the phone and greeted visitors. We now had a centre which offered information on the women’s movement in Bristol; it was a place for group meetings and for meeting others socially.
With the new centre available, the Bristol Women’s Abortion and Contraception Campaign (WACC) group was able to go ahead with pregnancy testing. There was a room and a small entry hall that could be used, access to a fridge and a loo, a phone number to call for information. Vitally, one of the organisers was in a job where she could get access to pregnancy testing kits. Testing was offered for two hours on Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings.
It is hard to remember now, when you can walk into any chemist for a home testing kit, but to get a test then you usually had to take your urine sample to your GP. In Bristol, samples had to be sent away for the test, so there were no results on the day. And six years after the 1967 Abortion Act, many GPs were still unhappy to offer tests to women whom they thought might be thinking of asking for an abortion. Free testing, with on-the-spot results, was therefore a service which met a real need.
There would be two or more helpers at each session. One to welcome women to the centre and to answer the phone if needed. The other to carry out a test, to chat to the woman and to explain to her what the result most probably meant. New testers were put on the rota with one or two experienced testers to learn how it was done. We would always explain that neither positive nor negative tests were absolutely to be relied on – there was always a small chance of being misled. The test we used was the Pregnosticon Planotest. Tests were not a mystery – we showed the women how quick and simple it was. We mixed a drop of urine and two drops of reagents on a glass slide and looked for the result after two minutes. We didn’t ask for money, but there was a bowl out for any donations.
We were all quite young and naive. For instance, we had no idea at the start that so many older women would want the service. Menopausal women who had missed a period might want reassurance that they were not pregnant – but they might be pleased that they were. They might have been longing for a child. And some women had complicated pregnancies. One day we met a young woman with sickle-cell anaemia: we felt very inadequate trying to help her. Fortunately, she was already under consultant care.
If a women seemed unhappy at a positive result, she was advised to see her GP. Alternatively, the Brook Pregnancy Advisory Service held sessions at four different venues across Bristol for any woman who didn’t want to consult her own doctor.
An unexpected hazard was that the Women’s Centre from time to time housed a woman seeking emergency shelter from a relationship involving violence; this was difficult both for that woman and for the pregnancy testers who were trying to provide a confidential service. Sometimes it became clear that a woman coming for a test was also in need of refuge. This situation was not resolved for nearly two years, while the Women’s House Project (later Bristol Women’s Aid) searched for suitable housing where a refuge could be provided away from the Centre.
In 1974, the Bristol WACC group made a television programme for Harlech Television about their campaign. A mention of the Pregnancy Testing Service led to many enquiries. What’s more, some GPs began to refer women directly to us because the local service was slow – it then took about three weeks.
When the Women’s Centre was required to move from Redland in 1975, new premises were rented in the centre of Bristol, first at 59 Union Street, then beside the Mud Dock at 44 The Grove. Pregnancy testing activities moved to each new centre. They carried on, on Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings, at least until March 1981.
From an old Family Planning Association (FPA) leaflet produced by the SW London Branch
*Source: WACC newsletter Vol 2 no 2