Daughter to Emmeline, sister to Christabel, Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst (English, 1882-1960) was perhaps the most reservedâthough no less dedicatedâmember of the Womenâs Social and Political Unionâs founding family. Pankhurst designed banners, posters, and other promotional materials for the militant WSPU, but eventually left, opting to provide practical help to women by instituting a daycare, a Montessori school, inexpensive restaurants, and a well-paying toy factory. In 1927, Pankhurst had a son, Richard. As a single mother, she thereafter argued that the vast sums of money spent on âengines of destruction ⊠[should] be diverted to the high service of life creation.â In her book Save the Mothers, Pankhurst lamented the preventable deaths of women and their children, born and unborn, from her native England to imperialist-threatened Ethiopia.
âIt is grievous indeed that the social collectivity should feel itself obliged to assist in so ugly an expedient as abortion in order to mitigate its crudest evils. The true mission of Society is to provide the conditions, legal, moral, economic, and obstetric, which will assure happy and successful motherhood.â
âFrom âThe True Mission of Society,â Save the Mothers, 1930
By Jen Hawkins