Stopes, Marie

▪ British botanist and social worker

in full  Marie Charlotte Carmichael Stopes 

born Oct. 15, 1880, Edinburgh, Scot.

died Oct. 2, 1958, near Dorking, Surrey, Eng.

 advocate of birth control who, in 1921, founded the United Kingdom's first instructional clinic for contraception. Although her clinical work, writings, and speeches evoked violent opposition, especially from Roman Catholics, she greatly influenced the Church of England's gradual relaxation (from 1930) of its stand against birth control.

      After obtaining a doctorate in botany from the University of Munich in 1904, Stopes taught at the University of Manchester. A specialist on fossil plants and the problems of coal mining, she had established a considerable academic reputation when the failure of her first marriage, which was annulled in 1916, caused her to turn to the problems of marriage. She initially saw birth control as an aid to marriage fulfillment and as a means to save women from the physical strain of excessive childbearing. In this respect she differed from several other early leaders of the birth-control movement, who were more concerned with eliminating overpopulation and poverty.

      In 1918 she married Humphrey Verdon Roe, cofounder of the A.V. Roe aircraft firm, who helped her in the crusade that she then began. Their original birth-control clinic was founded three years later, in the Holloway district of London. In the meantime she wrote Married Love and Wise Parenthood (both 1918), which were widely translated. Her Contraception: Its Theory, History and Practice (1923, new ed. 1931) was, when it first appeared, the most comprehensive treatment of the subject. After World War II she promoted birth control in East Asian countries.

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