Katti Anker Møller was a Norwegian feminist, children"s rights advocate, and a pioneer of reproductive rights.
Background
She was born Cathrine Anker in Hamar, the daughter of Herman Anker. She had nine siblings and grew up around the first folk high school at Sagatun in Hamar, founded by her father. Her mother died at the age of 50, apparently exhausted from her many pregnancies.
Career
She is known to posterity as the "advocate of mothers."
Her modus operandi was to travel and give lectures in local meetings, a revolutionary approach for a woman of her time. This culminated in the institution of the so-called Castberg laws passed by the Norwegian parliament in 1915. She then turned her attention to decriminalizing abortion in Norway, 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 to her causes.
In spite of opposition from opinion leaders such as Sigrid Undset, she managed to establish the first "hygiene office" in Oslo to inform women on contraception.