Margaret Amy Pyke (1893–1966) was a British birth control activist and family planning pioneer. A founding member of the British National Birth Control Committee (NBCC), later known as the Family Planning Association (FPA), she succeeded Lady Gertrude Denman as chairman of that organization in 1954. She was also a member of the British Eugenics Society. Among other publications and articles, she wrote "Crypto Eugenics in The Empire" and "Family P...
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Margaret Amy Pyke (1893–1966) was a British birth control activist and family planning pioneer. A founding member of the British National Birth Control Committee (NBCC), later known as the Family Planning Association (FPA), she succeeded Lady Gertrude Denman as chairman of that organization in 1954. She was also a member of the British Eugenics Society. Among other publications and articles, she wrote "Crypto Eugenics in The Empire" and "Family Planning: An Assessment" (extracted from The Eugenics Review, Vol 55 No 2, July 1963, Publication Date: 1963). In "Family Planning : An Assessment" Pyke stated "How should we tackle the problem of the Roman Catholic Church?" Pyke also claimed in the same article that there were "Allegedly 300 abortions every day in this country". Thus she was claiming there were approximately 109,500 abortions every year in 1963 (before abortion was legalised by the Abortion Act 1967). This is surprising as the number of abortions in the UK in 2003 was 181,600...
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