The Sexual Offences Act became law in 1967, the same year the UK’s National Health Service made the contraceptive pill available to all women in the country for the first time.

(‘The Pill’ had been available since 1961 but only to married women who consulted their usually male GPs and gained their approval.)

Women were now free from the fear of pregnancy. Victorian attitudes to sex were swept away by self-determining women 'on the pill' who demanded the right to choose how they lived and loved regardless of the expectations historically assigned to them because of their gender.