Anarchist physician and sexologist who wrote Catalonia’s 1936 decree legalising abortion
As Catalan director of public health he drafted the decree of 25 December 1936, the “Eugenic Reform of Abortion”, which allowed abortion on therapeutic, eugenic or ethical grounds.
A physician and psychiatrist born in Cartagena who studied medicine in Barcelona and Madrid. In the 1930s he ran the sex-advice column of the anarchist magazine Estudios, promoting contraception, and was a member of the CNT. At twenty-six he became Catalonia’s director of public health and social assistance and drafted the decree of 25 December 1936 legalising abortion, promoting refuges for prostitutes and sex-information centres for the young. In 1937 he became the Republic’s under-secretary of health. Exiled to the United States in 1939, he published the medical magazine MD and died in New York in 1972.
Activities and affiliations
-
1936–1939
Spanish Republic state institutionsMain
Government and administration -
1939–1972
Science and technology
-
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT)
Government and administration
Related historical events
- 1885–1941.11.06Sexual Reform Movements in Europe and the Reaction of the 1930s (1885–1941)Catalan health undersecretaryDrove the Catalan abortion decree of 1936.
- 1931–1941.11.06Sexual Reform in the Second Spanish Republic and the Francoist Reaction (1931–1941)Director general of health of the GeneralitatDrafted the 1936 Catalan abortion decree and planned liberatories for prostitutes and sexual information centres.
Catalan health reform and the abortion decree
He was born in Cartagena into a large, cultured family; his father, Félix Martí Alpera, was an educator who wrote five hundred books, and the family moved to Barcelona. Studying medicine in Barcelona and Madrid, he was strongly influenced by Gregorio Marañón on the doctor–patient relationship; he qualified at nineteen and a year later took his doctorate at the University of Madrid with a thesis on the psychology and physiology of Indian mystics. In the 1930s he was a leading contributor to the Valencian anarchist magazine Estudios, running its “psycho-sexual consultancy” that answered readers’ sexual and psychological questions, and spread knowledge of contraception.
After the war broke out he became, at twenty-six, Catalonia’s director of public health and social assistance and reorganised its health services around social and preventive medicine. The “Eugenic Reform of Abortion” he drafted was approved on 25 December 1936 and published on 9 January 1937, signed among others by the CNT health councillor Pere Herrera. While the Republican government kept abortion a crime, Catalonia alone accepted abortion on therapeutic, eugenic or ethical grounds and brought it into the Generalitat’s health service. He also promoted refuges for prostitutes, sex-information centres for the young and an institute of sexual science, and helped Mujeres Libres with its programme for the liberation of prostitutes. In 1937 he became under-secretary of health of the Republic; Health Minister Federica Montseny wanted to extend the decree to all of Spain, but the Republican government blocked it.
Commanding the medical corps of the Republican air force, he was wounded at the Ebro; when Barcelona fell to Franco in January 1939 he hid in the countryside, then fled to the United States and became an American citizen. In Manhattan he founded MD Publications, published the medical magazine MD from 1957 until his death and taught the history of medicine at New York Medical College. He died suddenly in Manhattan on 24 May 1972. It has recently emerged that, as an employee of the Sackler family, he was a key link in the American opioid crisis.