The law was initially aimed at working-class women in towns near military bases, due to the concern that sexually transmitted infections were hampering Britain’s forces.

However, no provision was made for the physical examination of prostitutes' male clientele, which became one of the many points of contention in a campaign to repeal the acts.

During the nineteenth century the public began to concern itself with particular social problems, an increasing view of the "ideal woman" was beginning to emerge and the "angel of the home" was becoming a popular stereotype.

The underlying expectation of Victorian "respectability" and morality, which particularly valued female chastity and modesty, also played a part in raising the standards for the actions of women.

Low earnings, in some cases, meant that women had to resort to prostitution to be able to provide for themselves and their families, particularly in households where the male breadwinner was no longer around.

[10] Regulating prostitution was a key part of the government's efforts to control the high level of venereal disease in its armed forces.

By 1864, one out of three sick cases in the army was caused by venereal disease; admissions into hospitals for gonorrhoea and syphilis reached 290.7 per 1,000 of total troop strength.

[13] Since the government wanted to limit the spread of venereal diseases within the armed forces, the initial acts targeted towns near bases and ports.

In certain cases, if a brothel was discovered near a base, a police officer was placed outside as a guard to track how many men were coming in and out, along with arresting the women who were under suspicion of prostitution.

Florence Nightingale's opposition to the "Continental system" or state regulation of prostitution probably delayed passage of the legislation by a couple of years.

[18] In 1862, Nightingale prepared a thorough critique of the regulatory approach in Note on the Supposed Protection Afforded against Venereal Diseases, by recognizing Prostitution and Putting it under Police Regulation.

When the first woman to qualify as a doctor in England, Elizabeth Garrett, wrote in favour of the acts, Nightingale, using the name “Justina,” opposed her, with two articles, in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1870.

The Association strongly campaigned for the extension of the Contagious Diseases Acts outside of the naval and army towns and for them to be made applicable to the whole of the country, as they believed this was the best way of regulating prostitution.

This group initially barred women from its meetings, however, leading to the establishment of the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts by Josephine Butler.

These repeal organizations attracted the vigorous support of moralists and feminists but also those more generally concerned with civil liberties, especially since the acts were perceived as having violated basic human rights.

[9] The opponents struck a chord with the public consensus on the issues surrounding the acts including double standards and lack of consent.

Josephine Butler also published essays and spoke at several meetings to rally others in support of repealing the Contagious Disease Acts.

In many of her speeches at conferences, she condemned the inherent double standard in the acts and “aimed to take the responsibility of purity gatekeeping out of the hands of the women and shift some of the responsibility onto men as well.”[23] Similar to Florence Nightingale’s approach mentioned above, Dr. Charles Bell Taylor and William Paul Swain released a paper in 1869 on their observations of the acts, in which they criticized the lack of police investigation or evidence required to bring women into a lock hospital or asylum.

Additional discourse from their report states that “the public at large is wholly ignorant of the subject, and a due regard for the public welfare urgently demands that the question shall be generally and exhaustively discussed.”[24] After years of protesting, the men and women of the National Association and the Ladies National Association gradually won the battle over the Contagious Diseases Acts, and, in 1886, the acts were finally repealed.

In the years that followed, doctors and researchers discovered that voluntary submission to be treated for sexually transmitted diseases was much more effective than the original compulsion that came with the acts.