As Dr. Aleck Bourne, gynecologist, stood in the dock of London’s Old Bailey Courthouse in 1938, he could not possibly foresee the ethical impact his case would have on the medical profession. Charged under Section 58 of the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act for performing an abortion on a 14-year-old girl who had been gang-raped, Bourne, a consultant gynecologist at St. Mary’s Hospital, pleaded not guilty.
Aleck William Bourne © National Portrait Gallery, London, CC 3.0
The case was a cause célèbre; the girl had been referred to Bourne by Dr. Joan Malleson, a prominent member of the Birth Control Movement, after another doctor refused to perform the abortion. Bourne did not deny that he had aborted the child. Abortion was legal if it would save the mother’s life, and he argued that the mental impact on the mother of carrying the child to term was sufficient justification. The jury took a mere forty minutes to deliver a verdict of “not guilty.”
The presiding judge, Mr. Justice Macnaghten, had told the court: “If the doctor is of the opinion, on reasonable grounds and on adequate knowledge, that the probable consequences of the continuation of the pregnancy would make the woman a physical or mental wreck, then he operates, in that honest belief, for the purpose of preserving the life of the mother.” The British Medical Association was in session in Plymouth when news of the verdict arrived; the room erupted in cheers.
Decades later, Dr. Aleck Bourne would become one of Great Britain’s most distinguished pro-life advocates—and spend the remainder of his life attempting to counter the events set in motion by the case that bore his name.
Rex v Bourne was not significant simply because it was an abortion case; it was significant because Aleck Bourne was not a stereotypical back-alley abortionist. Bourne was one of the most distinguished physicians in the country. His Synopsis of Midwifery, published in 1913, went through multiple editions. Throughout his life, his achievements in the medical field would be recognized as outstanding.
In Great Britain, the Rex v Bourne verdict made it possible for doctors to begin performing abortions without fear of legal consequences in cases where the mother’s life was not physically in danger and set the stage for legalization, although abortions initially remained relatively rare. It also had international ripple effects. In 1988, the Canadian Supreme Court cited Rex v Bourne in its R v. Morgentaler decision, which overturned Canada’s abortion laws, as did other Commonwealth countries in their own abortion decisions.
Initially, Bourne supported “abortion reform,” although he only condoned abortion in the very limited cases in which he thought it “necessary” and firmly believed that a society in which poverty was addressed and women were empowered would eliminate abortion almost entirely. He sat on the British Medical Association’s 1935 Committee on Abortion and served on the Medico-Legal Committee of the Abortion Law Reform Association (ALRA), which pushed for the liberalization of abortion laws.
But Bourne was soon horrified by the impact of his landmark case on English law. In 1945, he left the ALRA. Bourne, an agnostic, affirmed the fundamental scientific truth that a unique, individual human life begins at conception and found the idea of abortion on demand morally abhorrent. In 1966, he became a founding member of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, one of the world’s first anti-abortion organizations.
Bourne campaigned hard against MP David Steel’s 1967 Abortion Act. If it were to pass, he warned, it would be a “calamity” that would lead inexorably to the “greatest holocaust in history.” In his 1963 memoir A Doctor’s Creed: The Memoirs of a Gynaecologist, Bourne explained why he had changed his mind so dramatically:
Those who plead for an extensive relaxation of the law [against abortion] have no idea of the very many cases where a woman who, during the first three months, makes a most impassioned appeal for her pregnancy to be ‘finished,’ later, when the baby is born, is thankful indeed that it was not killed while still an embryo. During my long years in practice I have had many a letter of the deepest gratitude for refusing to accede to an early appeal.
Bourne’s deliberately chosen language may sound jarring, but history has borne out his grim predictions. Since the 1967 Abortion Act, over 9 million abortions have taken place in Great Britain. The numbers are still rising. In England and Wales , 247,703 abortions took place in 2022—nearly three of every ten children conceived. That number rose 11% in 2023 to a rate of 23 abortions per 1,000 residents, the highest since the 1967 Abortion Act passed. Bourne saw it all coming and did everything in his power to stop it.
When Bourne died in 1974 at the age of 88, he was universally lauded in obituaries. They all mentioned Rex v Bourne, but many conspicuously ignored his tireless campaign, begun at the age of 80, against abortion on demand. The 1975 obituary in the British Medical Journal did note his pro-life contribution, observing in the second-last paragraph that although he would be primarily remembered for “courageously inviting prosecution in 1938,” Bourne had subsequently campaigned relentlessly against the UK’s abortion regime:
It is nevertheless of considerable interest to record that he was strongly opposed to abortion for purely social and trivial indications. During the debates which took place on a great many platforms before the 1967 Act, he spoke on many occasions against the proposed legislation, foreseeing the inevitable consequences of total liberalization of the law.
The life and work of Dr. Aleck Bourne provide a sterling example for the medical professionals who seek to follow in his footsteps. He was not simply known as a pro-life advocate; he was known for his courage. Even those who fiercely disagreed with him saw him as a man of integrity; none second-guessed his commitment to each of his patients. The way in which he engaged in pro-life advocacy is a model for today, in a far more hostile culture.
As Bourne’s obituaries emphasized, he was admired because he was a model of excellence. His accomplishments and relentlessly high standards demanded respect. He served as an examiner at Cambridge University and in 1972 was made an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. The Royal College of Surgeons of England described him as “a man of great compassion and understanding and noted that he “always impressed with his warm personality, kindliness, and friendliness.” His multiple books were considered standard and went through many reprintings.
Bourne’s career is a fine example of the advice a doctor from Canadian Physicians for Life gave to an audience of medical students: To be a respected as a pro-life medical professional, you must be respected as a medical professional. For pro-life medical professionals, there is no better argument than professional excellence; despite what many in the medical field might think, pro-life advocacy flows from this excellence rather than contradicting it.
Dr. Aleck Bourne deserves to be remembered not only for the seminal case that bears his name and which he later regretted, but for his courage, his excellence—and his prescience and advocacy in defense of every human life.
Interesting. I won’t watch - Call the Midwives - because it pushes abortion.