Abstract
Since the legalisation of abortion in Britain in 1967, an estimated 200,000 women have travelled from the island of Ireland to England for the termination of a pregnancy. However, the origins of the Irish abortion trail are at least a century old and lie in women emigrating to Britain to flee the moral intolerance that pertained in Ireland towards unmarried mothers and their offspring. The emigration of Irish pregnant single mothers since at least the 1920s allowed both states and conservative commentators to boast of low illegitimacy rates and high moral purity. This chapter traces this early history and explores moral migration in the context of growing concern regarding the impact of repeated pregnancies and maternal health more generally. In particular, the tension that developed between contemporary concerns for public morality and women’s health is assessed.
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Notes
- 1.
The Irish Family Planning Association calculates that from 1980 to 2017 at least 173,308 women travelled from the Republic of Ireland to the UK for abortions, www.ifpa/Hot-Topics/Abortion/Statistics, accessed 2 September 2018. These estimates do not include women from Ireland who travelled to other countries, for example, the Netherlands.
- 2.
P. Jackson, ‘Outside the Jurisdiction: Irishwomen Seeking Abortion’, in C. Curtin, P. Jackson, and B. Connor (eds), Gender in Irish Society (Galway : Galway University Press, 1987), pp. 203–23.
- 3.
L. Earner-Byrne, ‘The Boat to England: An Analysis of the Official Reactions to the Emigration of Single Expectant Irishwomen to Britain, 1922–1972’, Irish Economic and Social History Journal, 30 (2003), pp. 52–70; L. McCormick, Regulating Sexuality: Women in Twentieth-Century Northern Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009).
- 4.
M. Finnane, ‘The Carrigan Committee of 1930–1931 and the “Moral Condition of the Saorstát”’, Irish Historical Studies, 23:128 (November 2001), pp. 519–36; S. McAvoy , ‘The Regulation of Sexuality in the Irish Free State ’, in E. Malcolm and G. Jones (eds), Medicine, Disease and the State in Ireland, 1650–1940 (Cork : Cork University Press, 1999), pp. 253–66; J. Smith, ‘The Politics of Sexual Knowledge: The Origins of Ireland’s Containment Culture and the Carrigan Report (1931)’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 13:2 (2004), pp. 208–33; M. Gialanella Valiulis, ‘Virtuous Mothers and Dutiful Wives: The Politics of Sexuality in the Irish Free State ’, in M. Gialanella Valiulis (ed.), Gender and Power in Irish History (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2009), pp. 100–14.
- 5.
Curtis goes so far as to argue that these forces were so concerted that they represented a challenge to democracy. See M. Curtis, A Challenge to Democracy: Militant Catholicism in Ireland (Dublin: The History Press, 2010). See also, S. McAvoy , ‘“Its Effect on Public Morality Is Vicious in the Extreme”: Defining Birth Control as Obscene and Unethical, 1926–1932’, in E. Farrell (ed.), ‘She Said She Was in the Family Way’: Pregnancy and Infancy in Modern Ireland (London: The Institute of Historical Research, 2012), pp. 35–52.
- 6.
C. Hug, The Politics of Sexual Morality in Ireland (Basingstoke and New York: Macmillan Press, 1999), p. 3.
- 7.
See, for example, Rev. R. S. Devane, S.J., ‘The Unmarried Mother: Some Legal Aspects of the Problem: I’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 23 (1924), pp. 55–68; Rev. R. S. Devane, S.J., ‘The Unmarried Mother: Some Legal Aspects of the Problem: II’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 23 (1924), pp. 172–88; Rev. R. S. Devane, S.J., ‘The Unmarried Mother and the Poor Law Commission’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 31 (1928), pp. 561–82; Rev. R. S. Devane, S.J., ‘The Legal Protection of Girls’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 37 (1931), pp. 20–40.
- 8.
Sagart, ‘How to Deal with the Unmarried Mother’, The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 20 (July–December 1922), pp. 145–53, p. 146.
- 9.
See, for example, Report of the Committee on Evil Literature (Dublin, 1927); Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, Report of Committee on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor (Dublin, 1927); Report of the Committee on the Criminal Law Amendments Acts (1880–1885); Commission on Emigration, Report of the Commission on Emigration and Other Population Problems, 1948–1954 (Dublin, 1956).
- 10.
‘Irish Morals’, Irish Times , 2 March 1929.
- 11.
M. Luddy, ‘Moral Rescue and Unmarried Mothers in Ireland in the 1920s’, Women’s Studies, 30 (2001), pp. 797–817. As well as county homes , special homes were opened and administered by poor law authorities, but run by religious orders for example in Pelletstown, Dublin.
- 12.
In the south the Sacred Heart Order ran the Manor House Mother and Baby Home at Castlepollard in Westmeath between 1935 and 1971. In Northern Ireland, the Good Shepherd Sisters ran Marianville Home for Mothers and Babies in Belfast. In the Republic, the treatment of women in these homes and, in particular, the issue of infant mortality at these homes is currently the subject of an official commission. See Department of Children and Youth Affairs, Report of the Inter-department Group on Mother and Baby Homes (July 2014), https://www.dcya.gov.ie/documents/publications/20140716InterdepartReportMothBabyHomes.pdf, accessed 20 February 2018. Since 2103 Amnesty has pushed for an inquiry into mother and baby homes in Northern Ireland. See, for example http://data.nicva.org/article/mother-and-baby-homes-case-public-inquiry. In response the Northern Ireland Executive is currently funding research into the main homes.
- 13.
The Salvation Army ran, for example, Thorndale House, Belfast.
- 14.
Report of the Department of Local Government and Public Health , 1930–1931 (1932), National Archives, Ireland [hereafter NAI], Taoiseach Files, S8345.
- 15.
For an explanation of the class basis of this system see, L. Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child: Maternity and Child Welfare in Dublin , 1922–1960 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), p. 185.
- 16.
For Northern Ireland see, http://data.nicva.org/dataset/milltown-cemetery-1942-infant-death-and-burial-records. For the Republic see, Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child, pp. 195–207.
- 17.
Florence Russell , Hon. Sec. of the Liverpool and County Catholic Aid Society to Archbishop Byrne, June 1924. Cited in L. Earner-Byrne, ‘The Boat to England’, p. 60.
- 18.
J. Redmond, ‘Sinful Singleness? Discourses on Irish Women’s Emigration to England, 1922–1948’, Women’s History Review, 17 (2008), pp. 455–76.
- 19.
Earner-Byrne, ‘The Boat to England’, pp. 52–70; P. M. Garrett, ‘The Abnormal Flight: Migration and Repatriation of Irish Unmarried Mothers ’, Social History, 25 (2000), pp. 330–43.
- 20.
Memo from A. Litster, 13 June 1940. NAI: Clandillon Papers, Box (3). Letters/Reports setting up of Repatriation Scheme UK/Ireland, 1939–1950.
- 21.
G. Gaffney , ‘The Girl Emigrant’, Irish Independent, 15 December 1936.
- 22.
Memo. for Taoiseach from J. P. Walsh re. travel permits, 9 April 1944, NAI, Taoiseach Files, S11582B.
- 23.
A. Litster, ‘Unmarried Mother, in Great Britain and at Home’, 8 May 1948, Implementation of the Children’s Acts, 1945–1951, NAI, Clandillon Papers, Box (3). This section was deleted by the internal censor from the final report.
- 24.
Saint Patrick’s Guild had a long history in organising such adoptions and charged extremely high fees to the unmarried mother. M. J. Maguire, Precarious Childhood in Post-Independence Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), pp. 78, 92. The fee could range from £20 in the 1920s rising to £50 in the 1930s. L. Earner-Byrne, ‘The Rape of Miss Mary M.: A Mircrohistory of Sexual Violence and Moral Redemption in 1920s Ireland’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 24 (January 2015), pp. 75–98. By the 1940s the fees had reached £70. See ‘Mother’s Application Adjourned’, Irish Examiner, 5 June 1946. Adoption was increasingly common in Europe in the 1950s.
- 25.
‘Mother’s Application’, Irish Examiner, 5 June 1946. After sustained coverage on the issue, in particular by journalist Conall Ó Fátharta, the Irish Adoption Authority is currently examining the illegal registration of adopted children. C. Ó Fátharta, ‘Illegal Adoptions Known to HSE Since 2012’, Irish Examiner, 23 April 2018. See also, M. Milotte, Banished Babies: The Secret History of Ireland’s Baby Export Business (Dublin: New Island Books, 1997).
- 26.
McCormick, Regulating Sexuality, p. 55.
- 27.
See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-24819518, accessed 22 April 2018.
- 28.
See also, Northern Irish Assembly, ‘Research and Library Service Briefing: Overview of Adoption ’ (paper 126/10), 29 August 2010, p. 2.
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
Ulster Herald , 5 June 1948. There are many of these adverts, see, for example: Ulster Herald , 26 April 1948; Anglo-Celt, 13 July 1946; 22 November 1947; 15 May 1948.
- 31.
‘Woes of an Unwanted Child’, Irish Independent, 20 July 1927.
- 32.
‘Work of the NSPCC’, Offaly Independent , 22 November 1930.
- 33.
‘Protection of the Innocents ’, Irish Press, 4 November 1932.
- 34.
For an excellent review of demography and women see, M. E. Daly , ‘Marriage, Fertility and Women’s Lives in Twentieth-Century Ireland (c.1900–c.1970)’, Women’s History Review, 15:4 (September 2006), pp. 571–85. High levels of marriage and martial fertility were sustained in Northern Ireland until the middle of the twentieth century, but Ó Gráda has noted that the difference in Catholic and Protestant family size in Ulster was marked by the early part of the century: Catholic fertility was two-thirds higher than that of Protestants in 1971. C. Ó Gráda, ‘Did Ulster Catholics Always Have Larger Families?’, Irish Economic and Social History, 12 (1985), pp. 79–80; D. Urquhart, ‘Gender, Family and Sexuality in Ulster , 1800–2000’, in L. Kennedy and P. Ollerenshaw (eds), Ulster Since 1600 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 246–59.
- 35.
Urquhart, ‘Marriage, Fertility and Sexuality in Ulster ’, pp. 246–59.
- 36.
J. Deeny, ‘Perinatal Mortality in Ireland’, Irish Journal of Medical Science, 30:8 (August 1955), p. 349.
- 37.
M. D. McCarthy, ‘Some Family Facts in Ireland Today’, Christus Rex, 5 (1951), pp. 46–64, p. 60.
- 38.
M. Solomons, Pro Life? The Irish Question (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1992), p. 6.
- 39.
Bethel Solomons was born into a prominent Jewish family and was the first Jew to hold the position as Master of the Rotunda Hospital. William Murphy, ‘Solomons, Bethel Albert Herbert’, J. McGuire and J. Quinn (eds), Dictionary of Irish Biography, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), http://dib.cambridge.org.ucd.idm.oclc.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a8187.
- 40.
B. Solomons, ‘The Dangerous Multipara ’, Lancet (7 July 1934), pp. 8–11.
- 41.
Ibid.
- 42.
S. McAvoy , ‘“A Perpetual Nightmare”: Women, Fertility Control , the Irish State, and the 1935 Ban on Contraceptives’, in M. H. Preston and M. Ó hÓgartaigh (eds), Gender and Medicine in Ireland, 1700–1950 (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2012), pp. 189–202; Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child, pp. 34–58.
- 43.
Rev. D. Barry, ‘Medical Ethics ’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 20 (August 1922), pp. 168–80 cited in S. McAvoy , ‘Before Cadden: Abortion in Mid-Twentieth-Century Ireland’, in D. Keogh, F. O’Shea, and C. Quinlan (eds), The Lost Decade: Ireland in the 1950s (Cork, 2004), pp. 147–63, p. 148.
- 44.
See Dublin Diocesan Archives [hereafter DDA], Byrne Papers Box One: Lay Organisations, Stafford Johnson to Archbishop Byrne, 31 November 1931. See also, the inaugural address delivered before the Guild of SS Luke, Cosmas and Damien, Dublin, 21 April 1932, ‘The True Idea and Outlook of a Catholic Medical Guild’ by Dr. J. Stafford Johnson reprinted from the Catholic Medical Guardian, July 1932.
- 45.
Cited in Catholic Truth Society, The Problem of Undesirable Printed Matter (1931), p. 11.
- 46.
T. E. Flynn , ‘The Moral Argument Against Birth Control ’, The Dublin Review, 173:347 (October–December 1923), pp. 243–62.
- 47.
See McAvoy, ‘Before Cadden: Abortion in Mid-Twentieth-Century Ireland’.
- 48.
Fisher notes this was the preferred method in Britain prior to the widespread use of the contraceptive pill . K. Fisher, Birth Control , Sex , and Marriage in Britain 1918–1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 113.
- 49.
M. E. Daly , ‘Rhythm and Blues: Natural Family Planning in Ireland’, Unpublished Paper Presented at Centre for the History of Medicine in Ireland, 6 February 2014. The safe period was also known as the Ogino and Knaus method.
- 50.
J. Busteed , ‘The Problem of Population’, Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 15 (1937), pp. 47–70, p. 62.
- 51.
Discussion following Busteed’s paper, ibid., p. 68.
- 52.
Anon., Notes and Queries: ‘Diffusion of Knowledge Regarding the Sterile Period ’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 43 (1934), pp. 414–18, p. 417.
- 53.
Ibid., pp. 414–18.
- 54.
Cited in Daly, ‘Rhythm and Blues Natural Family Planning in Ireland’.
- 55.
Ibid.
- 56.
L. Earner-Byrne, ‘Reinforcing the Family: The Role of Gender, Morality and Sexuality in Irish Welfare Policy, 1922–1944’, The History of the Family, 13 (2008), pp. 360–96; L. Earner-Byrne, ‘Moral Prescription: The Irish Medical Profession, the Roman Catholic Church and the Prohibition of Birth Control in Twentieth-Century Ireland’, in C. Cox and M. Luddy (eds), Cultures of Care in Irish Medical History, 1750–1970 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 207–28; C. Beaumont, ‘Gender, Citizenship and the State in Ireland, 1922–1990’, in S. Brewster, V. Crossman, F. Becket, and D. Alderson (eds), Ireland in Proximity: History, Gender, and Space (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 94–108.
- 57.
- 58.
G. Jones, ‘Marie Stopes in Ireland. The Mothers’ Clinic in Belfast, 1936–1947’, Social History of Medicine, 5:2 (1992), pp. 161, 263.
- 59.
The corporation claimed that it lacked the power to grant to monies requested. Minute book of Belfast Corporation Maternity and Child Welfare Committee, 1925–1940, 10 September 1937, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland [hereafter PRONI], LA/28/9/AD/2.
- 60.
Figures from Jones, ‘Marie Stopes ’, p. 271.
- 61.
L. McCormick , ‘“The Scarlet Woman in Person”: The Establishment of a Family Planning Service in Northern Ireland, 1950–1974’, Social History of Medicine, 21:2 (2008), pp. 345–60, p. 347.
- 62.
Cited in M. Muldowney , ‘Woman in Wartime: The Mass-Observation Diary of Moya Woodside’, The Irish Review, 42 (Summer 2010), pp. 58–71, p. 63.
- 63.
Ibid., p. 64.
- 64.
L. Earner-Byrne, ‘Twixt God and Geography: The Development of Maternity Services in Twentieth-Century Ireland’, in J. Greenless and L. Bryder (eds), Western Maternity and Medicine, 1880–1990 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), pp. 108–9. See also, S. Paŝeta, ‘Censorship and Its Critics in the Free State, 1922–1932’, Past and Present, 181 (2003), pp. 193–218.
- 65.
McAvoy, ‘Before Cadden: Abortion in Mid-Twentieth-Century Ireland’, p. 150. It should be noted that the Anglican communion was still morally opposed to birth control in any other circumstances. For a sense of the reluctance with which this slight relaxation of the ban on birth control in all circumstances engendered see, Bishop of Oxford, C. Gore, Lambeth on Contraceptives (London: Mowbray, 1930).
- 66.
Rev. M. P. Cleary, ‘The Church of Ireland and Birth Control ’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 38 (December 1931), pp. 622–29.
- 67.
Undated in Department of Justice memo., NAI, Department of Taoiseach, S2547B cited in McAvoy, ‘Before Cadden: Abortion in Mid-Twentieth-Century Ireland’, p. 149.
- 68.
McAvoy, ‘Before Cadden: Abortion in Mid-Twentieth-Century Ireland’, p. 149.
- 69.
See A. Fremantle, The Papal Encyclicals in Their Historical Context (New York: The New American Library, 1956), p. 239.
- 70.
Rev P. O’Neill, ‘Casti Connubii’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 37 (1931), p. 232.
- 71.
Ibid., p. 233.
- 72.
Nephritis is an inflammation of the kidneys.
- 73.
Extract from Coyne’s report: Confidential statement re. section on contraception , issued by the League of Nations , c. 1932, NAI, Dept. of Health, B130/59.
- 74.
Report of the Council on the Work of the Nineteenth Session of the Committee, 15 October 1932, NAI, Dept. of Health, B130/59.
- 75.
G. Jones, Captain of All These Men of Death: The History of Tuberculosis in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Ireland (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2001).
- 76.
J. F. O’Sullivan, ‘The History of Obstetrics in Northern Ireland, 1921–1992’, Ulster Medical Journal , 70:2 (November 2001), pp. 95–101, p. 95.
- 77.
The office of a dedicated Minister of Health was introduced to Northern Ireland in 1944.
- 78.
O’Sullivan, ‘The History of Obstetrics’, p. 96.
- 79.
The Northern Irish rate of maternal mortality was 7.3 per 1000 live births, in comparison to a rate of 4.9 in England and Wales at this juncture (ibid.).
- 80.
C. G. H. Macafee , ‘Medical Students and the Teaching of Midwifery’, Ulster Medical Journal , 1:12 (1943), pp. 24–40, p. 38.
- 81.
For a real sense of the depth of this poverty outside the cities, see, J. M. Mogey, Rural Life in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947).
- 82.
Muldowney , ‘Woman in Wartime: The Mass-Observation Diary of Moya Woodside’, p. 62.
- 83.
Muldowney points out that in Woodside’s later career in America, she wrote approvingly of the eugenic sterilization programme of the government of North Carolina, which raises questions about some of her motivations. Indeed, Catholics in Ireland often used the association of the birth control movement with eugenics as another reason to discredit contraception (ibid.).
- 84.
Letter from M. Woodside to L. A. Hall, Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine, London , 6 August 1981. Cited in Muldowney, ‘Woman in Wartime: The Mass-Observation Diary of Moya Woodside’, p. 63.
- 85.
This was the result of the Health Service (NI) Act, 1946. O’Sullivan, ‘The History of Obstetrics in Northern Ireland’, p. 95.
- 86.
P. Martin , ‘Social Policy and Social Change Since 1914’, in Kennedy and Ollerenshaw (eds), Ulster Since 1600, pp. 308–23, p. 315.
- 87.
Ibid., p. 316. The reference here to two communities is to those who wished to see a united Ireland (nationalist and usually Catholic) and those who supported Northern Ireland’s place with the United Kingdom (unionists and usually Protestant).
- 88.
The best account remains E. McKee, ‘Church-State Relations and the Development of Irish Health Policy: The Mother-and-Child Scheme, 1944–1953’, Irish Historical Studies, 25:98 (1986), pp. 159–94.
- 89.
Irish Times , 20 April 1951 cited in R. Guyett-Nicholson, ‘Yours etc.—Public Perceptions of the Mother and Child Scheme’ (Unpublished MA Paper, UCD, 2018).
- 90.
This was, in part, due to the 1968 papal encyclical Humanae Vitae which is discussed in Chapter 4.
- 91.
Health Act, 1935. For full details see, http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1953/act/26/enacted/en/html. For discussion of its historical relevance to women’s health care see, Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child, pp. 163–68.
- 92.
See A. P. Barry, D. Meagher, and E. O’Dwyer, ‘Heart Disease in Pregnancy’, Journal of the Irish Medical Association , 38 (1956), pp. 82–83 cited in C. Clear, Women of the House: Women’s Household Work in Ireland, 1926–1961 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2000), p. 123. There is also the history of symphysiotomy , a practice continued in Ireland well into the 1980s by Catholic doctors as an alternative to caesarean sections.
- 93.
B. Hilliard , ‘Motherhood, Sexuality and the Catholic Church’, in P. Kennedy (ed.), Motherhood in Ireland (Cork: Mercier Press, 2000), p. 144; See Fisher’s work on the reality of these intimate negotiations in Britain for the same period. K. Fisher, ‘“She Was Quite Satisfied with the Arrangements I Made”: Gender and Birth Control in Britain 1920–1950’, Past and Present, 169 (2000), pp. 161–93. The stories recorded in K. Kearns, Dublin Tenement Life: An Oral History (Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 1994) repeatedly testify to lack of negotiation in relation to sexual matters—mothers in general did not perceive that they had an option with regard to sexual intercourse and when, or how often, it occurred.
- 94.
Hilliard , ‘Motherhood, Sexuality and the Catholic Church’, p. 145.
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Earner-Byrne, L., Urquhart, D. (2019). Maternity and Moral Migration, 1920s–1960s. In: The Irish Abortion Journey, 1920–2018. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03855-7_2
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