The 'Converted Unbelievers': Catholics in Family Planning in French-Speaking Belgium (1947-73)

This paper looks at the journey of eleven counsellors in marital counselling centres in French-speaking Belgium, from the creation of the centres in 1953, to the 1970s, when contraception became legal, and abortion became a public issue. At the time of Humanae Vitae, groups of volunteers, working within Catholic organisations where counselling took place, began to structure their activity around Carl Rogers's ethics of client-centred therapy, placing their religious ideology in a secondary position to focus on the problems experienced by the couples and women they were receiving in the centres... Mehr ...