The concluding chapter sets out some of the key themes to emerge from the book. It recalls the influence of the various groups of actors who gave meaning to the Abortion Act, emphasising how the Act was shaped over time in a complex process of negotiation, dispute, revision and consolidation. We locate the Act within the shifting contours of a country undergoing a demographic revolution, exploring how it shaped and was shaped by processes of secularisation, the decline of discursive Christianity and an enhanced role for science in ordering understandings of the world, changing norms of gender, family and disability, shifting ideas of medical authority and changing technologies.

Chapter 2 traces the Act’s early, formative years. We explain how its meaning was negotiated as women arrived in doctors’ surgeries seeking services that they now believed to be lawful and how doctors worked to understand and apply the new law. We explore how, over time, different interpretations of the Act coexisted, fell out of use or became entrenched in professional codes, internal policy and procedure documents, official guidance and medical curricula. The chapter ends in 1974 with the publication of two important texts discussing the workings of the Abortion Act in these early years: the sensationalist media expose Babies for Burning and the highly influential and authoritative Lane Report.