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Legality and Irish Abortion, 1920s–1960s

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The Irish Abortion Journey, 1920–2018

Part of the book series: Genders and Sexualities in History ((GSX))

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Abstract

Since the foundation of both states on the island of Ireland women have had to face the risks inherent in pregnancy and navigate moral, legal and social controls. The issue of fertility control was driven underground in Ireland until the 1960s which resulted in the illegal importation of contraceptives in independent Ireland and backstreet abortions and prosecutions against those who broke the law in both jurisdictions. This chapter explores circumstances under which legal and illegal abortions were carried out on the island of Ireland prior to 1967. It also examines the consequences of the restrictive abortion regime for Irish women.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Mollie Dunsmuir, ‘Abortion: Constitutional and Legal Developments’, 18 August 1998, http://www.publications.gc.ca/Collection-R/LoPBdP/CIR/8910-e.htm, accessed 4 November 2018.

  2. 2.

    See P. Conroy, ‘Maternity Confined—The Struggle for Fertility Control ’, in P. Kennedy (ed.), Motherhood in Ireland (Cork: Mercier Press, 2000), p. 131; Kennedy noted that the subject was rarely mentioned in Ireland but that the case of Nurse Cadden , a backstreet abortionist, brought the issue to public attention in the 1950s. Nurse Cadden became in popular imagination and media coverage the ‘personification of evil ’. F. Kennedy, Cottage to Crèche: Family Change in Ireland (Dublin: The Institute of Public Administration, 2001), p. 39.

  3. 3.

    For a review of the case of Nurse Cadden see NAI, Dept. of Taoiseach, S16116. McAvoy, ‘Before Cadden: Abortion in Mid-Twentieth-Century Ireland’, pp. 147–63; Conroy, ‘Maternity Confined’, p. 127. See also McAvoy, ‘Its Effect on Public Morality Is Vicious in the Extreme’, pp. 35–52.

  4. 4.

    Neither Stopes’ Mothers’ Clinic or the Midnight Mission in Belfast provided advice on abortion. Founded in the nineteenth century , the Midnight Mission ran a home for prostitutes and unmarried mothers as well as a maternity home. It also provided antenatal visits, boarding out and adoption services. It changed its name to Malone Place Maternity and Rescue Home in 1944. Lack of financial support from the local authority led the Midnight Mission to close in 1949. For Irish letters to Marie Stopes see, C. Ó Gráda, Ireland: A New Economic History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 218–25.

  5. 5.

    B. Solomons (ed.), Tweedy’s Practical Obstetrics (Oxford and London: Oxford Medical Publications, 6th ed., 1929), p. 222. Solomons described this book as embodying ‘The Principles and Methods of Treatment at Present Practised at the Rotunda Hospital’.

  6. 6.

    Ibid., p. 317.

  7. 7.

    Ibid.

  8. 8.

    Ibid.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., p. 318.

  10. 10.

    The authors were: Gibbon Fitzgibbon, Church of Ireland; Ninian Falkiner, Unitarian; Bethel Solomons, Jewish; O’Donel Brown, Church of Ireland. The texts were: O’Donel Browne, A Manual of Practical Obstetrics (Bristol: John Wright , 1936); B. Solomons and N. M. Falkiner, Tweedy’s Practical Obstetrics (Oxford and London: Oxford Medical Publications, 7th ed., 1937); G. Fitzgibbon, Obstetrics (Dublin: Browne and Nolan, 1937). For a discussion of these texts see, Peter Morris, ‘The Statute Law on Abortion in Ireland’, in Jennifer Schweppe (ed.), The Unborn Child, Article 40.3.3 and Abortion in Ireland: Twenty-Five Years of Protection? (Dublin: Liffey Press, 2008), pp. 277–300.

  11. 11.

    Fitzgibbon, Obstetrics, p. 381 cited in Morris, ‘The Statute Law on Abortion in Ireland’, p. 292; for other conditions that would warrant a termination , see pp. 423–26.

  12. 12.

    Fitzgibbon, Obstetrics, p. 361.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., p. 222.

  14. 14.

    Solomons, Tweedy’s Practical Obstetrics, p. 226.

  15. 15.

    Ibid., p. 236.

  16. 16.

    ‘The Annual Report of the Rotunda’, Irish Journal of Medical Science, 92 (August 1933), p. 334.

  17. 17.

    S. I. Turkington, ‘Problems of Phthisis’, Ulster Medical Journal [Hereafter UMJ], 1:4 (1932), pp. 204–14, p. 210.

  18. 18.

    H. I. McClure , ‘Heart Disease Complicating Pregnancy’, UMJ, 5:4 (1936), pp. 234–40, p. 237.

  19. 19.

    T. S. S. Holmes , ‘The Incidence of Abortion at the Jubilee Hospital, Belfast’, UMJ, 10:1 (April 1941), pp. 2–4.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., p. 2.

  21. 21.

    Ibid., p. 3.

  22. 22.

    M. T. S. Benson , ‘The Provision of Abortion in Northern Ireland , 1900–1968’ [Unpublished PhD thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, 2017], p. 362.

  23. 23.

    Holmes, ‘The Incidence of Abortion at the Jubilee Hospital, Belfast’, p. 2.

  24. 24.

    C. Delay, ‘Pills, Potions, and Purgatives: Women and Abortion Methods in Ireland, 1900–1950’, Women’s History Review (2018), pp. 1–22, p. 12.

  25. 25.

    Benson , ‘The Provision of Abortion in Northern Ireland’, p. 281.

  26. 26.

    Benson offers a wonderfully nuanced discussion of this. Ibid., pp. 247–51.

  27. 27.

    H. A. K. Morgan, Prosecution in the Bourne Case, 1938, Belfast News-letter, 2 July 1938.

  28. 28.

    News-Chronicle cited in Belfast News-Letter, 20 July 1938.

  29. 29.

    Extracts from the Daily Telegraph, The Times and the News-Chronicle were included. Belfast News-letter, 20 July 1938.

  30. 30.

    Belfast News-Letter, 20 July 1938. The term abortion was fastidiously avoided in the press coverage of this case and others.

  31. 31.

    ‘London Surgeon Sent for Trial’, Irish Times , 2 July 1938.

  32. 32.

    ‘Surgeon Not Guilty’, Irish Times , 20 July 1938.

  33. 33.

    For an interesting account of the impact of the 1929 censorship act on public debate in the Irish Free State see, A. Keating, ‘A Shot Across the Bows of Journalism in the Irish Free State ’, History Ireland, 20 (2012), https://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/a-shot-across-the-bows-of-journalism-in-the-irish-free-state/.

  34. 34.

    R. S. Rose, ‘Induced Abortion in the Republic of Ireland’, British Journal of Criminology, 18:3 (July 1978), pp. 253–54.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., p. 253.

  36. 36.

    C. Rattigan , What Else Could I Do? Single Mothers and Infanticide, Ireland 1900–1950 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2012).

  37. 37.

    Ibid., p. 139.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., pp. 54, 61.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., p. 212.

  40. 40.

    Many women were convicted of the lesser offence of ‘concealment of birth ’, which was the failure to declare and register a birth.

  41. 41.

    Delay, ‘Pills, Potions, and Purgatives’, pp. 1–22; C. Rattigan , ‘“Crimes of Passion of the Worst Character”: Abortion Cases and Gender in Ireland, 1925–1950’, in M. Gialanella Valiulis (ed.), Gender and Power in Ireland (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2008), pp. 115–40.

  42. 42.

    Leanne McCormick , ‘“No Sense of Wrongdoing ”: Abortion in Belfast 1917–1967’, Journal of Social History, 49:1 (2015), pp. 124–48, p. 129.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., p. 130.

  44. 44.

    McAvoy, ‘Before Cadden: Abortion in Mid-Twentieth-Century Ireland’, p. 158; Delay, ‘Pills, Potions, and Purgatives’, p. 8; Benson , ‘The Provision of Abortion in Northern Ireland’, p. 118; McCormick, ‘No Sense of Wrongdoing ’, pp. 124–48.

  45. 45.

    Delay, ‘Pills, Potions, and Purgatives’, p. 13. See also, MacAvoy, ‘Before Cadden: Abortion in Mid-Twentieth-Century Ireland’; Benson , ‘The Provision of Abortion in Northern Ireland’.

  46. 46.

    Delay, ‘Pills, Potions, and Purgatives,’ p. 8; McCormick, ‘No Sense of Wrongdoing ’, p. 128.

  47. 47.

    Delay, ‘Pills, Potions, and Purgatives’, pp. 1–22.

  48. 48.

    Ibid., p. 3.

  49. 49.

    Delay, ‘Pills, Potions, and Purgatives’, p. 5.

  50. 50.

    Anne O’Connor notes how old these methods were in Ireland. A. O’Connor, ‘Abortion: Myths and Realities from the Irish Folk Tradition ’, in A. Smyth (ed.), The Abortion Papers: Ireland (Dublin: Attic Press, 1992), p. 62.

  51. 51.

    Delay, ‘Pills, Potions, and Purgatives’, p. 11.

  52. 52.

    Figures collated from 1858 in England and Wales, from 1867 for England, Wales and Ireland and from 1894 for Scotland . Extracted from Rose, ‘Induced Abortion in the Republic of Ireland’, p. 245.

  53. 53.

    Conroy, ‘Maternity Confined’, p. 131.

  54. 54.

    McAvoy, ‘Before Cadden: Abortion in Mid-Twentieth-Century Ireland’, p. 153.

  55. 55.

    Ibid., p. 160; Conroy, ‘Maternity Confined’, pp. 127–38, p. 131.

  56. 56.

    Benson , ‘The Provision of Abortion in Northern Ireland’, p. 357.

  57. 57.

    McAvoy, ‘Before Cadden: Abortion in Mid-Twentieth-Century Ireland’, p. 158; Delay, ‘Pills, Potions, and Purgatives’, p. 11.

  58. 58.

    McAvoy, ‘Before Cadden: Abortion in Mid-Twentieth-Century Ireland’, p. 151.

  59. 59.

    Ibid., p. 161.

  60. 60.

    Ibid., p. 147. This fear of abortion was cultivated and persisted well into the 1990s in Ireland. For example, in 1993, Carol Walsh, of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, who had been a counsellor in Liverpool for more than twenty years and had seen hundreds of Irish women in that time, explained: ‘a common misconception is that thousands of women die annually on British operating tables and that many are convinced they will never be able to have children’. Rachel Clare, ‘Unwanted Pregnancies at Christmas’, Irish Times , 4 January 1993.

  61. 61.

    See, for example, A. Furedi (ed.), The Abortion Law in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Family Planning Association Northern Ireland, 1995); P. Compton, et al., ‘Regional Differences in Attitudes to Abortion in Northern Ireland’, Irish Geography, 19:2 (July 1986), pp. 38–48.

  62. 62.

    Hug, The Politics of Sexual Morality in Ireland, p. 79.

  63. 63.

    See, www.legislation.gov.uk/apni/1945/15/section/25; L. Smyth , ‘The Cultural Politics of Sexuality and Production in Northern Ireland’, Sociology, 40:4 (2006), p. 666.

  64. 64.

    Benson , ‘The Provision of Abortion in Northern Ireland’, p. 232.

  65. 65.

    See Minutes of Belfast Midnight Mission, 10 September 1941 (PRONI, D2072/1).

  66. 66.

    McCormick, ‘No Sense of Wrongdoing ’, p. 126. Benson notes that court records are incomplete and his research points to a higher number of cases. He also urges the exploration of lower courts and courts beyond Belfast. Benson, The Provision of Abortion in Northern Ireland, pp. 40–43.

  67. 67.

    McCormick, ‘No Sense of Wrongdoing’, p. 139.

  68. 68.

    See Benson , ‘The Provision of Abortion in Northern Ireland’.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of History, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Lindsey Earner-Byrne

  2. Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Diane Urquhart

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Earner-Byrne, L., Urquhart, D. (2019). Legality and Irish Abortion, 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_3

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