Katti Anker Møller
Encyclopedia
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
feminist, children's rights
Children's rights movement
The Children's Rights Movement is a historical and modern movement committed to the acknowledgment, expansion, and/or regression of the rights of children around the world...
advocate, and a pioneer of reproductive rights
Reproductive rights
Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as follows:...
. She is known to posterity as the "advocate of mothers."
She was born Cathrine Anker in Hamar
Hamar
is a town and municipality in Hedmark county, Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Hedmarken. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Hamar. The municipality of Hamar was separated from Vang as a town and municipality of its own in 1849...
, the daughter of Herman Anker. She had nine siblings and grew up around the first folk high school
Folk high school
Folk high schools are institutions for adult education that generally do not grant academic degrees, though certain courses might exist leading to that goal...
at Sagatun
Sagatun folk high school
Sagatun Folk High School was a folk high school in Hamar, Norway.The first of its kind in Norway, it was founded by Herman Anker and Olaus Arvesen in 1864. The school building was erected around 1865, and drawn by architect Emil Victor Langlet. The school was disestablished in 1892, having been...
in Hamar, founded by her father. Educated as a teacher, she spent a year in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, where her exposure to the life of prostitutes and single mothers affected her profoundly. Her mother died at the age of 50, apparently exhausted from her many pregnancies.
She married her cousin Kai Møller from the mansion of Thorsø in Torsnes
Torsnes
Torsnes is a former municipality in Østfold county, Norway.It was created by a split from Borge on 1 January 1910. At that time Torsnes had a population of 1,538....
, now part of Fredrikstad
Fredrikstad
is a city and municipality in Østfold county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Fredrikstad....
, in 1889, with whom she had three children, among them the physician Tove Mohr, whose daughter Tove Pihl
Tove Pihl
Tove Agnethe Pihl was a Norwegian educator and politician for the Labour Party.She was born in Kristiania as the daughter of professor in medicine Otto Lous Mohr and the noted activist Tove Mohr. Her maternal grandmother was Katti Anker Møller...
has carried on the pro-choice
Pro-choice
Support for the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-choice movement, a sociopolitical movement supporting the ethical view that a woman should have the legal right to elective abortion, meaning the right to terminate her pregnancy....
activism in Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
. Møller took an early interest in the dangers of too many childbirths, and the plight of unmarried women and their children. Her modus operandi
Modus operandi
Modus operandi is a Latin phrase, approximately translated as "mode of operation". The term is used to describe someone's habits or manner of working, their method of operating or functioning...
was to travel and give lectures in local meetings, a revolutionary approach for a woman of her time.
In collaboration with her brother-in-law Johan Castberg
Johan Castberg
Johan Castberg was a Norwegian jurist and politician best known for representing the Radical People's Party . He was a government minister from 1908 to 1910 and 1913 to 1914, and also served seven terms in the Norwegian Parliament...
, she worked tirelessly to legislate the rights of children born out of wedlock. This culminated in the institution of the so-called Castberg laws passed by the Norwegian parliament in 1915. These laws were revolutionary in their time in giving illegitimate children full rights of inheritance and the right to use their fathers' last names.
She then turned her attention to decriminalizing abortion in Norway
Abortion in Norway
The legality of and public opinion toward abortion in Norway has changed dramatically in the last 100 years. Current Norwegian legislation and public health policy provides for abortion on demand in the first 12 weeks of gestation, by application up to the 18th week, and only under special...
, an idea she presented through a lecture called "the liberation of motherhood," with the subtitle "the production of children under culture, the woman's right to decide over her own body." This was met with broad opposition, also from women.
She was not dissuaded and continued her efforts, adding birth control
Birth control
Birth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...
to her causes. In spite of opposition from opinion leaders such as Sigrid Undset
Sigrid Undset
Sigrid Undset was a Norwegian novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928.-Biography:Undset was born in Kalundborg, Denmark, but her family moved to Norway when she was two years old. In 1924, she converted to Catholicism and became a lay Dominican...
, she managed to establish the first "hygiene office" in Oslo to inform women on contraception.
She once said that "everything that I have accomplished, was to honor my mother."