Aleck William Bourne (4 June 1886 – 30 December 1974) was a prominent British gynaecologist and writer, known for his 1938 trial, a landmark case, in which he asked to be arrested for performing a termination of pregnancy on a 14-year-old rape victim.
While at Queen Charlotte's, in co-operation with professor J. H. Burn, he published research papers on uterine action in labour and in response to various drugs.
[3] On 14 June 1938, Bourne was arrested after performing an operation without fee at St Mary's Hospital to terminate the pregnancy of six weeks of a 14-year-old girl who had been sexually assaulted by five off-duty British soldiers, guardsmen in the Royal Horse Guards, in a London barracks.
[4] She had first attended St. Thomas' Hospital, but was sent away by one doctor, who thought that "she might be carrying a future prime minister"[5][6] and "that anyhow girls always lead men on.
An advocate of state medicine, Bourne expressed his views in Health of the Future (1942), which drew much attention to the issue in the medical field.
[8] In his memoirs, Bourne wrote:Those who plead for an extensive relaxation of the law [against abortion] have no idea of the very many cases where a woman who, during the first three months, makes a most impassioned appeal for her pregnancy to be 'finished,' later, when the baby is born, is thankful indeed that it was not killed while still an embryo.