Janet Chance

VERY LOCAL (like, the building I’m doing my PhD in right now) AND VERY RELEVANT (like, could be written about 2022 USA) HERSTORY TIME! Have you heard of Janet Chance (10 February 1886 – 18 December 1953), a Scottish feminist writer, sex education advocate and birth control and abortion law reformer?

Janet Chance was born in Edinburgh to Jane Elizabeth Barbour and Alexander Whyte, a Scottish Calvinist minister who also served as principle of New College (aka University of Edinburgh’s School of Divinity, where I’ve been studying for the last 7 years and which is crying out for some herstory!). Her middle brother was killed during the first world war, but her eldest brother survived and went on to earn a knighthood for his political work. Janet lived with her family in a fancy house in the Edinburgh New Town until she married businessman and stockbroker, Clinton Frederick Chance in 1912.

The newlyweds moved to London, where they became enthusiastic advocates and benefactors of the English Malthusian League and the efforts of American reformer Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement (stay tuned for some more detailed posts about Sanger and the EML league). Despite suffering from intermittent bouts of depression, Chance busied herself as a member of the Workers' Birth Control Group (WBCG), founded in 1924 by birth control advocates Stella Browne and Dora Russell to give women wider access to birth control information (stay tuned for more about them too!).

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Chance was especially touched by the plight of poor and working-class women who had no knowledge of sex or reproduction, and no access to the latest available contraceptive methods. In an attempt to help, she volunteered with a sex education centre in the East End of London. In 1929, she used the experience she had gained to write and present a report, "A Marriage Education Centre in London," at the Third Congress of the World League for Sexual Reform in London.

Chance realised that a central cause of the issues of overpopulation and unsafe abortions was the repressed British attitudes towards sex and reproduction which regarded both as something to be shamed and kept secret. In response, Chance wrote several books influenced by the sexual reform movement on the importance of acknowledging women's sexuality and educating them about it. These writings were popular enough to be banned in Ireland where they were considered scandalous, especially by the Catholic Church who saw them as encouraging female licentiousness.

Chance’s work with the working classes also illuminated her to the fact that poor women had very limited birth control options. In most cases, the only option to avoid unwanted pregnancies was abortion. However, at the time, abortion was illegal in Great Britain under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act. In 1929, the Infant Life Act legalised abortion only when it was essential to preserve the life of the mother (so still more progressive than some US states today…). Knowing the dangers of illegal back street abortions, Chance helped found and support the Abortion Law Reform Association (ALRA) in 1936, alongside WBCG colleague Alice Jenkins and the physician Joan Malleson (also on the list for their own posts). Through Women's Co-operative Guilds and the Labour Party, the ALRA sought to pressure politicians to support the notion that women should have the power to decide if their own pregnancies would be terminated, which was still a widely opposed view at the time.

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TW: SUICIDE.

However, women’s rights weren’t the only social cause Chance championed. During the late 1930s, she also worked to help get refugees out of Germany, Austria and other Nazi-occupied nations, even traveling to Vienna and Prague in the summer of 1938. Among those she was trying to help were Austrian actress Lilia Skala, Ludwig Chiavacci and Sidonie Furst.

However, she continued to chair the ALRA throughout the war. However, following the war, the organisation no longer targeted Labour, but campaigned more generally for a new parliamentary law by pushing for a private member's bill. However, their dreams would not be achieved until 1967 when the Abortion Bill was passed.

Sadly, Janet did not live to see this bill enacted. In August 1953, her husband Clinton passed away. This triggered an extremely serious bout of depression, for which she was hospitalised. Tragically, just four months after her husband’s death, Chance lost her battle with depression, dying at the age of 67.  

Janet was not only ahead of her time – but also ahead of ours! So many lessons can be learnt from Janet’s remarkable life, namely the correlation between poverty, patriarchy, and planned parenthood. Like Janet, we, wherever we are in the world, should be fighting to educate women about their sexuality and rights, and making sure that everyone has access to safe and affordable birth control and abortions.