Abolitionism: Unterschied zwischen den Versionen

From 1864 to 1869, the British Parliament passed so-called Contagious Diseases Acts (CDA) on the recommendation of a committee established in 1862 to inquire into venereal disease in the armed forces. By 1864, one out of three sick cases in the army had been caused by venereal disease, and admissions into hospitals for gonorrhoea and syphilis had reached 290.7 per 1,000 of total troop strength. The cause of this situation was easily detected. As military men were discouraged from marriage and homosexual behaviour was criminal, prostitution was considered a necessary evil. Und these circumstances, it was deemed most effective to shield men from venereal disease by tightening health controls over prostitutes in certain ports and army towns. The CDA did exactly that by allowing police officers to subject women to compulsory checks for veneral disease and to confine them to locked hospitals ("Lock Hospitals") until "cured". In the beginning, the time limit for lock hospitals was three months, but it was subsequently extended to one year by the 1869 Act, and while the original act could only be applied in a few selected ports and towns, this restriction, too, was gradually changed so as to make the CDA operable in eighteen "subjected districts" by 1869.  

While the abolition of slavery was all about equality between the races, the fight against the discriminatory control of prostitutes was all about equality between the sexes. To punish women in order to protect men revealed morally questionable double standards in law and society. As one prostitute said: ''It is men, only men, from the first to the last that we have to do with! To please a man I did wrong at first, then I was flung about from man to man. Men police lay hands on us. By men we are examined, handled, doctored. In the hospital it is a man again who makes prayer and reads the Bible for us. We are had up before magistrates who are men, and we never get out of the hands of men till we die!

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.