18 Facts About Diane Munday

Diane Munday is a British political activist who, as a leading member of the Abortion Law Reform Association from 1962 until 1974, played a prominent role in the decriminalisation of abortion in the United Kingdom with the Abortion Act 1967.

Diane Munday was a co-founder of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service.

Diane Munday's mother was "believing but not practicing" and from an early age Diane became attracted to a secular humanist worldview.

Diane Munday cited Thomas Huxley and Charles Darwin as early intellectual influences in this direction.

Diane Munday worked at St Bartholomew's Hospital in the City of London as a laboratory researcher.

Diane Munday has said that when she was pregnant with her third child, she was prescribed thalidomide to combat sleeplessness, but did not take it: soon after the thalidomide scandal broke, where babies were being born with disabilities, due to their mothers taking thalidomide.

Diane Munday fell pregnant again in 1961 and decided to have an abortion; at the time this was a criminal offence in the United Kingdom, contrary to the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.

At the next annual general meeting of the ALRA, Diane Munday met Madeleine Simms, an associate of the Fabian Society who shared her Jewish background, and together they would go on to become two of the most prominent faces of the ALRA.

At a time when the few women who did have abortions kept such information private, Diane Munday openly discussed her abortion at public-speaking events, on television and on radio interviews, breaking a social taboo.

Diane Munday became the General Secretary of ALRA from 1970 and in 1974 she became a founding member, press and publicity officer for Birmingham Pregnancy Advisory Service.

Diane Munday has had a long-term involvement with the ethical movement and its successor secular humanism.

Diane Munday has publicly opposed the influence of Christianity on British society: during her tenure with the Abortion Law Reform Association posters associated with the campaign singled out by name "Roman Catholic" Members of Parliament who opposed changing the law and when she had an abortion in 1961, she complained that the working-class Catholic nurses on shift were not sympathetic to her having an abortion.

Diane Munday has argued against any kind of religious exemption for medical practitioners who do not want to participate in providing abortions, arguing that they should not be employed in health care.

Diane Munday sat as a magistrate on the St Albans Bench until the retirement age, 70.

Diane Munday clashed with the Church of England and after her eldest son was called a "pagan" at a local Anglican school, successfully campaigned for a state school in the village of Wheathampstead.

Diane Munday was appointed a patron of Humanists UK.

Diane Munday has been involved in lobbying in favour of voluntary euthanasia, being a "carer" for three people who wish to undergo euthanasia.

Diane Munday was involved in the Diane Pretty case, arguing against the result of the Pretty v United Kingdom case under the European Court of Human Rights which decided that the European Convention on Human Rights did not provide a "right to die" and that her husband could not hope to escape prosecution if he "assisted" in her death.