BPAS, British Pregnancy Advisory Service

This collection contains both catalogued and uncatalogued materials. Please contact collections@wellcomecollection.org for more information or to request access to uncatalogued records. A summary of the uncatalogued materials in this collection is provided below under 'Accruals'.

This collections predominently consists of working files relating, primarily, to either legal disputes between BPAS and other parties or subject-orientated files of collected material which was relevant to their work (including a separate, extensive collection of press cuttings). Beyond this there is a small amount of material which documents the core running of BPAS, although this is fairly scant and not a systematic documentation of the administrative fucntions of the organisation.

1960-2014

94 Boxes Uncatalogued: 1 box

This material has been organised into logical sections which reflect the content of the files, not the order in which they were stored at BPAS. However, the actual files have not been amended and are presented here as they were found. As such, there is some overlap between files, particularly those within the same specific subject area.

The files have been organised into the following sections:

A: Organisational Papers

B: Publications

C: Campaigns

D: Legal Cases

E: Press, Media & Publicity

F: Press Cuttings

G: Subject Files

Donated in August 2017. Press cuttings donated by Abortion Law Reform Associaiton in 1985 and incorporated to this collection in 2017.

This organisation was orginally founded in the midlands in 1967 as Abortion Aid with the aims to:

'Educate and inform the public at large about abortion in all its aspects: legal, medical and social.'

and

'Provide those with the burden of an unwanted pregnancy with an opportunity for sympathetic conversation and advice in order that, where possible, (once the law was operative) they may be referred to the most appropriate social or medical agency for practical help.'

On the 14th July 1968, just after the Abortion Act came into force, they registered as a charity under the name, 'Birmingham Pregnancy Advisory Service'. The need for consistent and reliable services they could use for referral led then to create their own nursing home in Brighton in 1971 to serve this purpose. By February 1972, the focus of their operations had expanded to the extent that they decided to officially change their name to the 'British Pregnancy Advisory Service'.

They continue to operate at time of writing (November 2017).

Transferred to Wellcome

This collection has been partially catalogued and the catalogued part is available to library members. Some items have access restrictions which are explained in the item-level catalogue records. Requests to view uncatalogued material are considered on a case by case basis. Please contact collections@wellcomecollection.org for more details.

Acc 2657, donated in 2022 (Uncatalogued): Material created and collected by Diane Munday, presumably in connection to her work for British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS). Records mostly relate to Diane Munday’s work on abortion relating to press, publicity and broadcasting, including press cuttings and collected publications, correspondence with broadcasters, transcripts, speaking notes, Abortion Service Provision meeting correspondence, correspondence with Prof Glanville Williams (who drafted the Abortion Act), abortion opinion polls, and related papers.

Direct transfer from BPAS offices in Holborn, London