Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC with me Max Pearson this week

after the US Supreme Court's recent ruling on abortion the history of reproductive rights

around the world. We'll hear from campaigners on different sides of the debate,

including the women in Poland who were determined in the 1990s to make sure

abortion wasn't easily available. There was this sense of fighting for our rights about the protection of child's life from the moment of conception.

We'll visit Tunisia, the first Muslim country to make abortion legal.

They're taught about contraception, abortion, and the law is giving them equal rights.

After three months here, they return to their villages to spread the word, because it's here

in the Tunisian countryside that the modern Tunisian woman has to win the fight for equality.

And we'll look at the development of the contraceptive pill along with the relatively recent fight to have it made available in Japan. That's all coming up later in the

podcast but we're starting in the UK with the campaign to legalize abortion

which resulted in a new law introduced in 1967. It made abortion legal under certain circumstances

in England, Scotland and Wales. One of the campaigners, Diane Monday, has been speaking to Laura

Jones. In the 1960s, a young mother called Diane Monday became well known in Britain for her work demanding abortion rights for women.

Diane is in her 90s but she can still remember the fierce opposition she often faced

particularly at one public meeting.

As soon as I got to my feet,

the audience all stood up and chanted murderer, murderer,

murderer, and I ended up conducting the meeting from the steps of the hall with all our

supporters in the car park.

But despite the hostility, Diane was getting more and more support from

women, grateful that a taboo issue was being raised at last. Once I started talking about it, One off to the other. They came up to me. I've never told anybody else. Only my husband you, but I've had an abortion.

...