Humanists have principles too, but they are principles which do not refer to the existence of the supernatural. This is the real distinction. Humanist principles depend on the fact of the existence of other people, on society, on living a civilized and humane life, not on pleasing the supernatural.
Madeleine Simms, ‘Problems at Home and School’ in An Inquiry into Humanism: Six Interviews from the BBC Home Service (1966)
Madeleine Simms was an abortion rights campaigner, writer, and advocate for women’s reproductive health. Alongside other humanist activists like Vera Houghton and Diane Munday – her colleagues in the Abortion Law Reform Association (ALRA) – Simms played a key role in the successful passage of the Abortion Act 1967. She also played an active part in the humanist movement, including writing a column for Humanist News, contributing articles to the Rationalist Press Association’s New Humanist magazine, and discussing a humanist approach to parenting on the BBC Home Service.
If there is one great practical contribution to modern living that the godless can truly claim for their very own, it is birth control.
Madeleine Simms, ‘Freethinkers All’ in The Humanist, February 1966
Madeleine Zimmerman was born in Vienna to Jewish parents, moving to London while she was still a baby. She attended St Paul’s Girls’ School, and then the University of Aberdeen, where she read moral philosophy and English literature, while also running the socialist and philosophical societies. She married David Simms in 1956, with whom she had two children.
Appalled to discover the disparity in abortion access between the wealthy and the poor, as well as the idea of unwanted children born into neglect, Madeleine Simms joined the Abortion Law Reform Association. Following the discovery of the role of thalidomide in causing birth defects, she ramped up her ALRA activity, going on to play a central role in the passage of the Abortion Act 1967, which legalised abortion under certain conditions in England, Scotland, and Wales. As press officer and editor of ALRA’s newsletter, Simms worked tirelessly to raise public awareness, lobby politicians, and, after the Abortion Act was passed, to defend it from attack and amendment.
With Keith Hindell, Simms co-authored Abortion Law Reformed, a detailed account of the campaign that led to the Act’s passage, published in 1971. In the same year, she began studying for a degree in medical sociology at Bedford College, London. Simms also wrote influential research reports, including Non-medical Abortion Counselling (1973) and Teenage Mothers and their Partners (1991).
Simms’ commitment to policy making rooted in evidence, compassion, and freedom of choice epitomised her humanist outlook, and underpinned a firm belief in the vital role of humanists in political action. In a 1978 article for New Humanist (based on a talk given to the Hampstead Humanist Society), she wrote:
Freedom does not come of its own accord. It has to be fought for and defended anew in each generation. Humanists and Secularists have always been in the forefront of this fight. That is their historic destiny, and their particular glory. At the present time, the battle at home for freedom and privacy centres on the abortion issue. A generation ago, it centred on the birth control issue. A generation hence, it will centre on the voluntary euthanasia issue. The essential argument remains the same on both sides, even though the subject changes.
Simms devoted her life to the defence of freedom and choice, from her activism with ALRA, through her arguments against religious indoctrination in schools, to her heartfelt submission to the Commission on Assisted Dying in favour of choice at the end of life. She died on 3 October 2011, aged 81.
As one of the architects of the Abortion Act 1967, Madeleine Simms helped to ensure the safety, dignity, and reproductive choice of thousands of women across England, Scotland, and Wales. After the Act was passed, she continued to campaign for human rights, and to champion the historic role – and ongoing responsibility – of humanists in progressive social reform. Simms’ words on the death of Dora Russell might also be applied to her:
She was able to communicate with all kinds of people… on many subjects that mattered to her, and they would listen because of her passionate concern, her integrity, her vitality and her sense of fun. It is still hard to realise that we won’t hear her talk again.
Madeleine Simms at a memorial meeting for Dora Russell at Conway Hall, 8 July 1986
Madeleine Simms obituary | The Guardian
Madeleine Simms’ Papers | Wellcome Collection
Keith Hindell and Madeleine Simms, Abortion Law Reformed (1971)
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