By contrast the death rate of miners from fatal accidents was 1.1 per thousand miners actually engaged in mining. Leah L’Estrange Malone and I then coined the slogan: “It is four times as dangerous to bear a child as to work in a mine . . .”.’1 Concern about infant and maternal mortality had been gaining momentum from the late nineteenth century, and by the early 1900s proposals for reform were circulating internationally. From 1904 the pioneering German League for the Protection of Motherhood and Sexual Reform presented integrated policies for child-bearing and child-rearing, while supporting birth control and abortion. After the 1917 Russian revolution, Alexandra Kollontai declared mothering a ‘social function’ and introduced eight weeks’ maternity leave, nursing breaks at work, free pre- and post-natal care and cash allowances. When the International Congress of Working Women held a Maternity Convention in Washington DC in 1918, among its proposals were full maintenance payments and free medical care for six weeks, before and after childbirth.
