Abolitionism: Unterschied zwischen den Versionen

From 1864 to 1869, the British Parliament passed so-called Contagious Diseases Acts (CDA). Designed to protect the armed forces of contagious diseases by tightening the control over prostitutes in certain ports and army towns, they started out in 1864 allowing police officers to subject women to compulsory checks for veneral disease and to confine infected ones to locked hospitals ("Lock Hospitals") for up to three months, a period gradually extended to one year with the 1869 Act. While the original act's limitation to a few selected naval ports and army towns was gradually lifted, making the CDA operable in eighteen "subjected districts" by 1869, the year 1869 also marked a turning point.

In 1869, the National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts was established; initially restricting women from its meetings, causing the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts to be quickly established by Josephine Butler. Both groups actively campaigned against the acts and between 1870 and 1885, 17,365 petitions against the acts bearing 2,606,429 signatures were presented to the House of Commons, and during the same period, more than 900 meetings were held. The repealists struck a chord with the public consensus on the issues surrounding prostitution and they highlighted the issue of double standards. It was the men and women of the National Association and the Ladies National Association who won the battle over the Contagious Diseases Acts, and, in 1886, the Acts were repealed, and abolitionism had won yet another victory.