Sexuality II: Contraception and Abortion

Abstract

The headline in the Irish Times read as follows: ‘Contraceptive Campaign Set Up’. The date was not, as one might expect, in the mid-1960s, but in March 1984.¹ Contraception is still a live issue in Ireland. In spite of the changes of the 1970s, the pill and other forms of artificial birth control are not readily available to everyone who wants them. Unlike most other European countries, in which campaigns for birth control started up to sixty years ago, it is only in the past fifteen years that contraception has been discussed openly in Ireland. Before that time it was a taboo subject, part of the misty area of sexuality which was private, unspeakable, tinged with sin.

Clare’s story is an example of the difference between Ireland and its closest neighbour, England. As a student nurse she went to train in London in the early 1970s and was astonished at the open attitude to contraception which she found there:

I couldn’t believe what I saw in the nurses’ changing room — empty pill packets in the dustbin! They were taking them out of their handbags and just putting them in the rubbish. I couldn’t believe it, because there was no way that would happen here with single girls. It was a huge thing for me to see at that time, it really was.