Rights of Women

Pro-suffrage propaganda postcard published by the Artists' Suffrage League. The postcard highlights the inequality between the rights of a mother and a father regarding the vaccination of children.
In 1907 the Vaccination Act of 1898 was amended to permit easier 'conscientious objection' to smallpox vaccination, at a time when the threat from the illness had greatly diminished. If a Father affirmed before a magistrate that he objected to vaccination because he believed it threatened the health of his child, and paid a fee, he would receive a certificate to take to the registrar and vaccination was not enforced. This was national legislation, and although some Parliamentarians tried to persuade the government to allow mothers to carry out this procedure, because fathers could not always get time off work, this request was refused. Only unmarried mothers or widows, or women whose husbands were abroad for a long period, were allowed to object in their own right.