Marie Stopes (October 15 1880 - October 2 1958) was a Scottish author, campaigner for women's rights and pioneer in the field of family planning. Stopes edited the journal Birth Control News which gave anatomically explicit advice, and in addition to her enthusiasm for protests at places of worship this provoked protest from both the Church of England and the Catholic Church. Her sex manual Married Love was controversial and influential.
Marie Stopes was also a prominent campaigner for the implementation of policies inspired by eugenics. In her Radiant Motherhood (1920) she called for the "sterilization of those totally unfit for parenthood (to) be made an immediate possibility, indeed made compulsory." Even more controversially, her The Control of Parenthood (1920) declared that "utopia could be reached in my life time had I the power to issue inviolable edicts... (I would legislate compulsory sterilization of the insane, feebleminded)... revolutionaries... half castes." Defenders of Marie Stopes point out that such remarks should be read in their historical context. Following Stopes' death in 1958, a large part of her personal fortune went to the Eugenics Society.
Links
Eugenics Society Members List - Sm-Sz.
Compare also