Writing to the Irish Independent in 1976, ‘as parents and members of concerned organisations’, a number of representatives of Irish conservative groups stated that in opposition to the ‘desires expressed’ by politicians such as Garret FitzGerald:

This joint letter from conservative groups, including the League of Decency, Parent Concern, Irish Family League, Nazareth Family Movement, Pro-Fide Movement, Save our Society, and Mná na hÉireann (Irish for ‘Women of Ireland’), highlights their concerns regarding the modernisation of Ireland, but also shows how groups used their authority as parents to justify speaking out on moral issues. The infusion of nationalist rhetoric suggests concerns about Ireland’s changing identity, while the letter also illustrates anxieties around individualism, suggesting that ‘it appears as if institutions of State are helping the attempt to pervert Irish society’.Footnote ¹

The contraception debate was an extremely polarising one. The previous two chapters have explored activist-led campaigns in favour of the legalisation of contraception. But, simultaneously, from the early 1970s, several groups also formed which actively campaigned against the legalisation of contraception.

The Catholic hierarchy continued to emphasise the Church’s line on contraception in the wake of continuing debates. However, from the 1970s, bishops had encouraged individuals to follow their conscience in relation to matters of personal or sexual morality but ‘reserved the right to voice their opinion on issues of morality, where legislation or constitutional reform had implications for the good of society, as they saw it’.Footnote ² This meant that the policing of sexual morality and active campaigning on issues such as contraception, divorce and abortion were taken up by a number of lay conservative groups. Or, as Chrystel Hug has put it, ‘these people had effectively taken over from the Church’ and were unafraid to defend Church teachings and ‘say loudly and clearly what kind of society they wanted to live in’.Footnote ³

The foundation of Irish pro-life groups stemmed from the anti-contraception campaigns, in contrast to Britain where, as Olivia Dee has shown, pro-life groups such as Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) (founded in 1967 to oppose the legalisation of abortion), and LIFE (founded in 1970), were primarily lobbying organisations which were set up to combat abortion.Footnote ⁴ While scholarship by Tom Hesketh and Cara Delay has illuminated elements of the Irish pro-life campaigns, there has been little research done on the anti-contraception campaigns that preceded them and which were integral to their foundation.Footnote ⁵ Moreover, as Diarmaid Ferriter has recently suggested ‘there is a tendency to regard some of the individuals leading such groups as almost comic’, but such views tend to underestimate ‘how well connected and determined they were’.Footnote ⁶ Aidan Beatty has complicated the picture and shown how those who campaigned against contraception presented a vision of Ireland which ‘represents a historically discrete modernist phenomenon’. In his view, conservative campaigners ‘saw themselves as the defenders of a traditional social order’ but these ideas owe their roots to the nineteenth century and ‘centred on relatively specific notions about land ownership, gender roles, public respectability, religious belief, attitudes towards “foreign” culture, and the role of the centralized state in enforcing these ideas’.Footnote ⁷ As Chapters 2 and 3 showed, England was often portrayed as a permissive country in relation to matters of sexuality, and a threat to Irish womanhood.

As this chapter illustrates, it is also crucial to place Irish groups within the wider international context. Activists’ rhetoric drew on a complex web of arguments which incorporated scientific evidence (such as the potential health risks of the pill) and sociological and statistical evidence in relation to the impact of ‘the permissive society’ in other contexts. As Jennifer Crane has argued in relation to child protection in 1970s Britain, emotional and experiential expertise (in particular motherhood) came to be more valued in public debates around the issue.Footnote ⁸ In the Irish context, anti-contraception campaigners also drew on their expertise as parents in order to give weight to their arguments. The chapter also shows how international networks, particularly links with conservative groups in the United States and the United Kingdom, assisted activists in developing their campaigns but also provided ideas which helped to set the foundation for the anti-abortion campaign in Ireland in the 1980s. Through the use of oral histories, archival material, newspapers and the publications of conservative groups, this chapter reveals campaigners’ concerns about the modernisation of the country and legislative change.Footnote ⁹ The chapter more broadly highlights the value of exploring the history of conservative groups, which to date, have received little historical attention, in contrast with surveys of social movements which tend to focus on environmental or feminist activism.Footnote ¹⁰

8.1 Early Activism: The Nazareth Family Movement and Mná na hÉireann

As Jeffrey Weeks has argued, the dramatic social changes and events of the late 1960s and early 1970s in Britain, such as the student revolts, economic crisis, industrial militancy, and the rise of the women’s movement and gay liberation movements, came to be seen by more conservative members of society as being ‘signs of breakdown or transformation in the old order’.Footnote ¹¹ In Britain in this period there was a growing sense of social crisis and moral authoritarianism was perceived to be a solution to these crises. One of the leaders of this movement was Mary Whitehouse, who succeeded in mobilising significant cross-class support for her Clean Up TV Campaign and National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association.Footnote ¹²

In Ireland, similarly, a number of conservative groups emerged in the early 1970s which were concerned with changes in Irish society, in particular, the potential advent of the legalisation of contraception and the impact that this might have on the traditional family. The earliest of these appears to have been the Nazareth Family Movement which was formed in response to Pope Paul’s ‘call for a family apostolate’ in Humanae Vitae. During the months that followed the publication of the encyclical in 1968, two of the founder members met to attempt to have the Rosary on television ‘as a means of renewing and strengthening traditional family prayer’ and out of this grew the Weekly Public Rosary Movement.Footnote ¹³ Writing to the Evening Herald in October 1970, founder member Marie Dunleavy MacSharry expressed her desire ‘to establish a movement similar to the one initiated by Mrs. Mary Whitehouse’ arising out of concerns from parents ‘about the permissiveness in our midst’, who were ‘anxious that something be done about it’. She requested that interested parties contact her so that she could arrange a meeting.Footnote ¹⁴ The subsequent meeting was attended by twenty-two people and a committee was elected with Donal J. Cullinan as chairman and MacSharry as secretary.Footnote ¹⁵ In a small card which survives in the Dublin Diocesan Archives, the group listed their objectives as ‘to voice lay support for the Church’s teaching on marriage and the family; to combat the attacks on marriage and the dignity of man such as artificial contraception, abortion, divorce and euthanasia; to work to encourage and restore family prayers especially the Rosary; to express lay support for the magisterium of the Church and to help to restore all things in Christ’. The group was described as ‘lay inspired and promoted’ and membership was open to those who could actively participate in the work of the organisation, with all members asked to recite the Rosary, if possible with their family, at least once a week for the intentions of the movement.Footnote ¹⁶

The group appears to have piqued Archbishop John Charles McQuaid’s interest, or concern. His secretary wrote to Donal Cullinan, in June 1971, stating that he needed ‘fairly urgently an account of the origins of the Nazareth Family Movement’ and further detail of its activities.Footnote ¹⁷ Cullinan responded promptly the next day with an account of the origins of the group. In this he stated that the Nazareth Family Movement had been concerned with ‘the wave of pornography sweeping the country’; but their efforts were soon focused on the contraception issue, particularly from 1971 when it became apparent that a bill would be introduced by Mary Robinson.Footnote ¹⁸ In March 1971, the group had defended the archbishop’s statements in relation to Humanae Vitae against claims by IFPRA that these teachings were unorthodox.Footnote ¹⁹ The group also engaged in exchanges of letters with the Chairman of the IFPRA, were interviewed by printed media as well as the BBC and NBC, and printed and distributed a ‘Prayer in Defence of Human Life’.Footnote ²⁰

The group then decided that it was ‘inappropriate to act in a manner which would identify the Nazareth Movement as nothing but an anti-contraceptive pressure group’ and instead decided to form the Association for the Protection of Irish Family Life at the end of March 1971. The aim of this organisation was to address youth and adult groups and ask them to voice their opposition to any change in the law on contraception.Footnote ²¹ The group claimed to take a non-militant approach, stating that ‘we do not see the fight in terms of emotive debate, demonstrations or similar activities but in a call to our fellow lay-folk to bear witness in a practical manner to their Catholic life which is the only road to true happiness’. As such, the group was most concerned with the organisation of prayer vigils, the establishment of a perpetual novena of prayers in defence of human life, and visits to shrines, as well as the publication of a private newsletter.Footnote ²² McQuaid’s secretary used the information provided by Cullinan to devise a report and also privately enquired with MacSharry and Cullinan’s priest in Walkinstown. He wrote in his report to McQuaid that the parish priest had affirmed that MacSharry was ‘a zealous, enthusiastic Catholic, a housewife with several children’, and that the Curate in charge of the district where Cullinan lived stated that he was ‘a fine Catholic. He is a Salesman, married, with several children’.Footnote ²³

In a 1971 statement, the Nazareth Family Movement argued that legalisation of contraception would lead to the introduction of divorce and abortion, quoting the example of Italy: ‘Just before Christmas they got divorce, now contraception and they are now considering abortion’. In response to these comments, Senator John Horgan, who was one of the senators backing Mary Robinson’s bill, argued ‘This vision of Irish society exists nowhere but in the heads of the people who think it is true. We already have a permissive society and people are exploited in other ways. This whole business of the floodgates opening is utterly ludicrous’.Footnote ²⁴

Marie Dunleavy MacSharry and Donal Cullinan were active in writing to the press in the early 1970s. For example, in March 1971, a letter by MacSharry published in the Evening Press argued that ‘the responsible planning of children is an essential part of Catholic teaching which involves a man’s being a man, and proving he is, by self-control, true love and consideration’.Footnote ²⁵ These ideas were not always well-received by members of the public. In response to a letter by MacSharry, a woman called Anne Doyle wrote a letter in favour of the legalisation of contraception to the Evening Press in March 1971, and sent copies of the same letter to a range of politicians, Church hierarchy, journalists and RTÉ staff. In a postscript to the letter, she addressed MacSharry directly, stating:

MacSharry, writing to Taoiseach Jack Lynch in March 1971, explained that she had received a copy of this letter and wanted to inform him that she was ‘the mother of 12 children, 6 surviving and of schooling age. One of these is an autistic child. I do all my own housework together with some other charitable works. I am active member of a few committees and have other interests. I have never had the luxury of a daily help.’Footnote ²⁷ MacSharry’s need to defend herself in this way against Doyle’s allegations suggests that she viewed her role as a mother of several children as an important marker of her authority to speak on the family planning issue. Cullinan and MacSharry wrote to Lynch again in June 1971 to state that they were strongly opposed to any change in the legislation relating to contraception, because they felt that it was contrary to ‘Natural Moral Law’ and that its introduction would lead to a ‘lowering of moral standards’.Footnote ²⁸ The group seems to have declined in activity from late 1971 onwards, however, they later appear to have emerged again as part of the umbrella group Council of Social Concern which was a member of the Pro-Life Amendment Campaign founded in 1981.

There were also conservative groups established outside of Dublin. Mná na hÉireann was a small but active group originally based in Cork, founded by Úna Mhic Mhathúna (chairman) and Áine Ní Mhurchú (vice-chairman) in 1971. Like the Nazareth Family Movement, they were strongly opposed to the legalisation of contraception. In 1977, the Irish feminist magazine Wicca characterised Mná na hÉireann’s beliefs as ‘reactionary and hysterical ravings’, suggesting that what united conservative groups was their ‘common denial of a human right to choose’, placing them in opposition to the women’s movement, which was united with’pro-contraception forces’ through ‘our absolute defence of the right of women in particular to control our fertility and obviously our lives’.Footnote ²⁹ Mná na hÉireann, conversely, were critical of the movement in favour of contraception, in one letter stating ‘So much for “Women’s Rights” and nothing at all for their dignity’.Footnote ³⁰ In an interview with Mary Leland of the Irish Times in 1973, they stated that ‘There is a handful of women in Dublin who claim to be speaking for the majority of women in Ireland and we believe that it’s not a majority opinion at all. The same number of women are always involved and some of them, the most vociferous, are foreigners’.Footnote ³¹ Leland described the members of Mná na hÉireann as ‘young women with young families. The familiarity of a shared Cork background indicates that they are idealistic and nationalistic, and they believe that the majority of Irish women are in their homes, rearing families, wanting family life to remain as it is’. In the interview, the group expressed the view that ‘We don’t believe that any person makes a conscious decision to use artificial contraceptives: they do it under pressure from propaganda’, and argued that there was no distinction between contraception and abortion because ‘they have the same aim, that of destroying new life’. There were also moral undertones to the statements made by the group. Leland reported that they ‘spoke nostalgically of the Irish way of life “when Ireland was truly Ireland, when we had our own language and culture and religion”; then, they said “we were a moral nation”’.Footnote ³²

Mná na hÉireann’s key forms of action were letter writing to newspapers, the collection of signatures on petitions and the production of circulars outlining their aims and beliefs. The group claimed in 1973 that there was not public support for the legalisation of contraception. They alluded to influences from Britain, arguing that ‘if the Government believes that it is the Government of a sovereign state it should legislate for the good of the people and without regard to the wishes or standards of a foreign state’.Footnote ³³ A letter in the Irish Examiner praising the efforts of the group from Micheal Ua Maignneir, based in Leeds, commended the two women for ‘making such stout and able defence of the Holy Father’s teaching on this subject […] May you yet win the day against the strangely voluble Slummi of anti-Catholicism and shoneenism’.Footnote ³⁴ Writing to Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave in February 1974, Úna Mhic Mhathúna and Áine Ui Mhurchú set out their key arguments against Mary Robinson’s bill on contraception. They referred to the fact that Senator Robinson was a Trinity College nominee to the Seanad and not an elected representative of the people, and therefore ‘should not be allowed to impose her views on the people in a matter of such national importance’.Footnote ³⁵ The group was concerned that the legalisation of contraception would lead to a ‘promiscuous society’ and would resent having to pay ‘for abortifacient contraceptives’ through rates and taxes when ‘the whole anti-life idea runs contrary to our religious beliefs’. The letter also drew attention to biases in the media which they felt were pressuring women to use artificial contraceptives while also stating the potential physical and psychological ill-effects of these contraceptives on women.Footnote ³⁶

In 1974, Mná na hÉireann wrote to the Irish Press to express their concerns that the legalisation of contraception would lead to depopulation and ‘a campaign for compulsory artificial contraception and sterilisation’. The group was concerned with the side effects of the pill and the actions of the IUD, arguing that women were being used ‘as guinea pigs and guinea pigs are always in a very dangerous position’.Footnote ³⁷ In April, 1974, the group collected over 250 signatures outside churches in Tralee, and claimed to have collected almost 10,000 signatures in Cork county and city alone.Footnote ³⁸ Petitions were a common strategy by anti-contraception campaigners and helped to illustrate that others agreed with their beliefs. Mná na hÉireann was also concerned with the role that the IPPF had with regard to the workings of the IFPA clinics and raised concerns that there would be a push towards compulsory sex education in schools and that children would begin using contraceptives.Footnote ³⁹ A circular produced by Mná na hÉireann and distributed to TDs and senators in Ireland alleged that the IPPF was ‘spreading disease and destruction to millions’ and suggested that the spread of contraceptives in Ireland had resulting in an increase in venereal disease.Footnote ⁴⁰

Mena Bean Uí Chribín (1928–2012) (often spelt Mena Cribben), an Irish conservative campaigner, joined the group as publicity officer in 1974.Footnote ⁴¹ Cribben had also written to the Taoiseach in 1973 with her husband Gus, to express her concerns about Mary Robinson’s reintroduced bill on contraception, arguing that the truth about contraceptives was being concealed and that the ‘dangers to health, spiritual and physical’ should be explained to the general public. In their view, the introduction of ‘uncontrolled drugs and devices’ would ‘reduce people to below the level of animals’ and she felt that the pro-contraception lobby was ‘not representative of the decent Catholic men and women of Ireland’.Footnote ⁴² In an interview with Emer O’Kelly for her 1974 book The Permissive Society in Ireland? the Cribbens argued that the media was biased in favour of contraception and ‘foreign, anti-Irish influences’. Moreover, their views highlight the tensions between old traditions of Irish family life and new societal changes. They explained ‘We think that it’s the Irish standards which were always accepted which have made us happy. We’re fighting to give our children the same chance of happiness’.Footnote ⁴³ Illegitimacy was also deemed to be the result of foreign influences. Mena explained: ‘Illegitimacy is not part of our Irish heritage. If you look at the Aran Islands, where Irish culture in its true sense is still alive, there’s no illegitimacy problem. Foreign influences create the problems, which is why we’ve set our faces against things like foreign pop music’.Footnote ⁴⁴ Evidently, for members of Mná na hÉireann, concerns about the influence of foreign (British) forces were paramount. Moving later into the 1970s, however, groups such as the Irish Family League were more strategic in how they framed their arguments, drawing on medical evidence relating to the side effects of artificial contraception, as well as concerns about what the introduction of contraception might lead to, in order to bolster their arguments.

8.2 The Irish Family League

The Irish Family League (IFL) was a group of Catholic campaigners founded in May 1973 and one of the most prominent organisations that campaigned against the legalisation of contraception. The key figures involved in the IFL were its chairman John O’Reilly, a married father of five children, who went on to be heavily involved in Ireland’s Pro-Life Amendment Campaign in the 1980s, and Mary Kennedy, who acted as secretary to the group. The executive was composed of less than ten individuals who met on a weekly basis. The group positioned themselves as being concerned with ‘promoting a Christian family atmosphere in Ireland, and fostering family welfare’.Footnote ⁴⁵ The IFL was extremely active in writing to the press and lobbying politicians. By 1980 they claimed to have 2,000 members.Footnote ⁴⁶ The IFL was formed following a visit from American pro-life campaigner, Father Paul Marx, to Ireland in 1973. Marx, a Catholic priest and Benedictine monk, was one of the leaders of the pro-life movement in the United States, establishing a number of organisations such as the Human Life Center (1971) and Human Life International (1981) and the Population Research Institution (1989).

Father Marx came to Ireland in January 1973 as part of a tour of talks in Ireland and Britain organised by the British SPUC. He gave a lecture at Power’s Royal Hotel, Dublin on 15 January.Footnote ⁴⁷ In his lecture, attended by about 150 people, Marx discussed abortion in the United States and advocated the education of young people in schools on the issue. He showed the audience a series of slides and film strips of normally developed foetuses and aborted foetuses as well as playing an audio recording of ‘an ultrasound record of what was described as a foetal heart beating in the foetus of three months gestation’. Marx also drew attention to the family planning clinics that had been recently established in Dublin, stating: ‘You have an organisation of family planning clinics paid for with outside money. I give you my word of honour that these people promote abortion – soon if not already’, referring to the IPPF which ‘you’ve got it right under your noses’ as he waved a booklet on family planning published by the IFPA. Marx also argued that contraception was not the solution to avoiding abortion, stating that ‘contraception leads to abortion’.Footnote ⁴⁸ In response to Marx’s comments, the IFPA publicly stated that under no circumstances did they advocate abortion.Footnote ⁴⁹ As part of his visit, Marx spoke to a group of hundreds of teenage schoolgirls at St. Marie’s of the Isles School in Cork on the abortion issue, using slides of aborted foetuses to illustrate his talk as well as showing them a 14 week old foetus in a jar.Footnote ⁵⁰ The showing of the foetus gained significant publicity and in response, the Archdeacon James Bastible of Cork stated that the foetus had been shown to the group without his foreknowledge and approval.Footnote ⁵¹ As Kathryn Slattery has shown, Marx and other American anti-abortion campaigners would go on to play an integral role in Irish anti-abortion campaigns in the 1980s, particularly in the development of constitutional activism.Footnote ⁵²

Following Marx’s visit, the IFL was formally organised in May 1973. As James Jasper has argued, ‘moral emotions are the core of political rhetoric. Indignation is the hottest of the hot cognitions; as a moral form of anger, it encourages action’. Social movements offer a means for activists to channel collective anger into collective protest.Footnote ⁵³ John O’Reilly, who was a founding member of the IFL, explained to me that he felt the need to set up a group because ‘things were happening and nobody seemed worried about them […] I was amazed that there was so much approving publicity about contraception although it was illegal’. In a letter to the Irish Independent in November 1973, IFL secretary Mary Kennedy, summed up their key aims as being ‘enshrining Christian values in our legislation, promoting Christian education of youth and family welfare; to oppose threats to the family and society such as violence, pornography, divorce, contraception and abortion’ as well as the promotion of natural forms of family planning such as Billings Ovulation and the Temperature method.Footnote ⁵⁴ IFL member Mavis Keniry founded the Dublin Ovulation Method Advisory Service, which later became the National Association of the Ovulation Method in Ireland (NAOMI). As well as these aims, the IFL’s objects were to ‘promote the Christian education of youth and the welfare of the family’ as well as opposing any permissive legislation. Euthanasia and secularism were also to be countered while amendments to the Irish Constitution and laws would only be accepted if they were in line with the Vatican II teachings ‘to infuse a Christian spirit into the mentality, customs and laws and structures of the community’.Footnote ⁵⁵ Hindering the legalisation of contraception was, however, the group’s key goal. John O’Reilly explained:

Concerns about an increase in promiscuity and sexual activity among young people were not unique to Irish conservative groups like the IFL. In the 1960s, as Steven Angelides has noted, ‘a moral panic erupted across the United Kingdom, North America and Australia over an apparent rapid rise in rates of premarital sex, promiscuity, immorality, illegitimate births, and venereal disease amongst young people.’Footnote ⁵⁶ In these countries, sex education was usually put forward as the solution to this problem, although there was considerable debate over the form that this should take.Footnote ⁵⁷

John O’Reilly had spent five years in Canada in the late 1950s, first in Montreal and then Toronto, returning to Ireland in 1960. He recalled:

While some campaigners’ visions of the permissiveness of other countries were not based on lived experience, for O’Reilly, it is clear that his time in Canada had a significant impact on his thinking. He explained his concerns at the time about the potential effects that the introduction of contraception would have on Irish society:

As with other groups, for the IFL, the use of petitions helped to demonstrate wider public support for their arguments. Members of the IFL were concerned by the open flouting of the law by groups such as the IFPA and FPS. In an open letter to the Irish government in July 1973, the IFL expressed their concerns about the illegal activities of groups distributing contraceptives in Ireland and requested that the government put a stop to these activities.Footnote ⁵⁸ In an attached document, the directors of both FPS and the IFPA were listed in addition to the laws that they had contravened.

One of the IFL’s major concerns was around young people and the potential for rising rates of promiscuity if contraception was legalised. In a 1973 letter from John O’Reilly and Mary Kennedy to the Irish Press, they asserted that the laws prohibiting the sale of contraception ‘reflect a standard of Christian morality geared to protect the young and society at large’. They believed that a change in the law would have consequences that ‘could only be inimical to public morality and render the rearing of children still more difficult’. Moreover, they raised concerns that some of the clinics did not differentiate between married and single clients. In the group’s view, ‘we do not accept that contraceptive peddling is an altruistic business, engaged in from the highest humanitarian motives. It is a sordid business, involving money, big business, and new vistas for medical careers. It provides medicine with an instant, lazy, and wrong answer to a problem. Its end results are sordidness and death and any short-term good is bought at an eventual terrible price’.Footnote ⁵⁹ Most notably the letter stated that the group had it on record that one of the family planning clinics had sold contraceptives to an 11-year-old. The 11-year-old in question was John O’Reilly’s daughter Deirdre. According to O’Reilly, in an oral history interview:

On 26 June 1973, O’Reilly wrote a letter to FPS with a postal order for 75p requesting condoms and had his daughter Deirdre sign it. FPS sent back condoms in a plain envelope addressed to Deirdre. In his words:

On 14 July, he made a subsequent draft letter to FPS enclosing £1.10 and had his 9-year-old daughter Eilish copy the letter word for word. A parcel containing a contraceptive was sent in return. In addition, the IFPA was charged with distributing the booklet Family Planning for Parents and Prospective Parents without a permit and for advertising an intra-uterine device for sale. Robin Cochran, secretary, and David McConnell, chairman, of FPS, were interviewed by the Gardaí and cautioned. In the court case that followed at Dublin District Court, the charges were dismissed.Footnote ⁶⁰ In the court case, the defendants argued that they could not have been aware of the ages of Deirdre and Eilish O’Reilly.Footnote ⁶¹ And, as John O’Reilly explained ‘Unfortunately, the DPP didn’t act until the Supreme Court case had taken place. [McGee case which deemed the right to import contraceptives a matter of marital privacy]. And then the activity was no longer illegal. So that fell flat on its face. But it had a chance of winning, or we wouldn’t have tried it. But, it didn’t win.’ However, through bringing the case to court, the IFL succeeded in raising concerns about the possibility that young people could gain access to contraception through significant coverage of the case in the media. There does not appear to have been unease in the press about O’Reilly’s use of his children for the purposes of entrapment. Instead, O’Reilly used his position as a parent to claim authority. For example, in a letter from O’Reilly and Mary Kennedy to the Irish Press in July 1973, O’Reilly and Kennedy wrote ‘As Irish parents, Christians and citizens, we take grave exception to the activities of certain organisations which are acting in open defiance of the laws of this State by distributing contraceptives and contraceptive literature and fitting contraceptives’ and noted that ‘we have on record that one of them supplied contraceptives to an eleven-year-old child’.Footnote ⁶² The same letter appeared in the Evening Herald on 17 August 1973.Footnote ⁶³ Undoubtedly, the idea that children were somehow gaining access to contraception would have created concern among some readers.

The IFL’s publications and letters to newspapers were rigorously researched and often included references to medical texts as well as statistical evidence in relation to issues such as abortion, venereal disease, and illegitimacy which were used to back up their arguments. This was a distinctive form of campaigning; perhaps activists were aware of the need to support their arguments with evidence rather than overly relying on moral arguments. The IFL self-published a booklet Is Contraception the Answer? in 1973, identifying themselves on the cover page as a ‘Team of Catholic Parents’ (Figure 8.1). 20,000 copies of the booklet were printed and circulated to doctors, pharmacists, nurses, all members of government, priests and nuns.Footnote ⁶⁴ According to John O’Reilly, this coincided with Mary Robinson’s Family Planning Bill which was put to the Senate on 14 November 1973. John O’Reilly stated:

O’Reilly recalled, to his surprise, receiving particular support from doctors and pharmacists who provided contributions to the IFL. In his view, ‘There were a lot of doctors, as a matter of fact, at that time, who resented the idea of legalised contraception and a lot of pharmacists who feared that they might be forced to sell them’.

Figure 8.1 Cover of Is Contraception the Answer? by the Irish Family League, 1974.

Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.

Is Contraception the Answer? emphasised a number of key points. Firstly, it argued that fundamentally, the use of artificial contraception went against the teachings of the Catholic Church. It claimed that since the publication of Humanae Vitae in 1968, the Irish public had been subjected to ‘a barrage of brain-washing from the media in favour of contraception and its legalisation in Ireland’, based on superficial reasons and hard cases, including ‘the horde of hypothetical women with sixteen children, living in one room with a drunken, unemployed husband’.Footnote ⁶⁵ The booklet drew on statistical evidence relating to illegitimate births in England in addition to quotes from medical professionals and campaigners such as Father Paul Marx. Fundamentally, the key argument of the booklet was that contraception would lead to ‘increased promiscuity, increased illegitimacy, rocketing V.D. figures, and a demand for abortion’.Footnote ⁶⁶ Links were made between contraception and abortion. The booklet argued that IUDs, which were available at family planning clinics in Dublin, were a form of abortifacient because ‘their action is to abort the fruits of conception at an early stage. […] Yet the I.U.D. is dishonestly described in the FGC’s brochure as a contraceptive and is fitted at their clinics in Dublin. So abortion is actually taking place quite openly in Dublin.’Footnote ⁶⁷ In addition, the booklet drew attention to the side effects of the contraceptive pill and IUD.Footnote ⁶⁸ While the publication explained that the early form of the pill was purely contraceptive in action, the newer low-dosage pills were ‘less successful in suppressing ovulation, but if they fail to do this, they will abort the fertilised ovum as does the I.U.D.’Footnote ⁶⁹ Instead, the IFL encouraged readers to utilise Catholic Church-approved natural family planning methods such as the temperature method and Billings method. Advice on these methods could be obtained by writing directly to the group.Footnote ⁷⁰ Moreover, it was argued that rather than reducing rates of illegitimacy, the introduction of contraception would result in an increase in births outside of marriage as well as leading to the legalisation of abortion.Footnote ⁷¹ In order to combat the issue of contraception, readers were encouraged to join the IFL, to make their views known to friends when the subject arose, to write to newspapers, TDs and senators, and ‘become an activist. You are fighting to prevent murder and the slaughter of innocents’.Footnote ⁷² This wording clearly had pro-life connotations.

An appendix at the back of the booklet contained details of the two key family planning groups, the FGC, and FPS, as well as listing names and contact details of individuals involved in the family planning movement in Ireland. These names were published ‘not to cause embarrassment to the people concerned but so that if you hear any of these people advocating contraception on the media, you will understand the significance of their doing so’.Footnote ⁷³ As well as reiterating earlier points about the illegality and perceived danger of the activities of the groups, the booklet also asserted that they had ‘documentary proof that the squalid activities of this organisation include the posting of contraceptives to children. Any child can obtain contraceptives in this way provided that an appropriate “donation” is enclosed’. It was asserted that through the publication of their activities in publications such as Nikki, Woman’s Choice and the Sunday World newspaper, family planning campaigners seemed ‘to be seeking to develop a market for their wares among teenagers, some of whom are mere children’.Footnote ⁷⁴

In a letter accompanying a copy of the booklet sent to Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave in November 1973, Mary Kennedy stressed that the IFL was ‘much distressed and alarmed by persistent rumours, and more than rumours of permissive legislation in regard to contraception and divorce’ and their concerns regarding the breaches of the law by family planning groups. Kennedy asserted that the existing laws were positive ones if fully enforced, and that if family planning clinics were to be established, they should be based entirely on natural methods. She asked if Cosgrave would receive a deputation of four or five of their members to discuss the situation, emphasising that ‘the question is most important to the real welfare of our country. We pray that God may guide our government’.Footnote ⁷⁵ Cosgrave’s secretary replied to say that the government had not taken any decision concerning changes to legislation relating to contraception. Furthermore, he wrote that the Taoiseach would be unable to receive a deputation to discuss this matter but that he would bring their letter to the attention of the Minister for Health.Footnote ⁷⁶

The IFPA produced their own response to the IFL booklet entitled Facts on Contraception: An Answer to ‘The Irish Family League’, which was sent to members of government. In this, the IFPA refuted the IFL’s claims around the links between contraception and illegitimacy, the idea that legalised contraception would lead to legalised abortion, links between contraception and promiscuity, and claims that the pill and IUD were abortifacients. The IFPA claimed instead that ‘effective contraception, provided for women who need it and who want it, is a means of reducing the toll of abortion. To change the laws is not to force women to use contraception, merely to allow them to meet their needs without breaking the law’.Footnote ⁷⁷

In a follow-up publication called Whither Ireland? the IFL discussed other trends that would follow the legalisation of contraception and the separation of heterosexuality from reproduction including homosexuality and test-tube babies.Footnote ⁷⁸ The contraception issue continued to be conflated with concerns about the introduction of abortion in Ireland. Father Paul Marx returned to Ireland in November 1973 where he gave lectures on abortion at a number of locations, including TCD, UCD and Maynooth, with a total of 20 talks over two weeks organised by the IFL.Footnote ⁷⁹ At a Dublin meeting attended by 300 people, Marx showed an anti-abortion film ‘Abortion: A woman’s decision’ as well as numerous slides depicting aborted foetuses. He encouraged audience members to help the pro-life cause ‘by joining the Irish Family League’.Footnote ⁸⁰ The IFL began to intensify their activities. Mary Kennedy regularly wrote letters to Irish newspapers, and was often interviewed by the press. In one interview with the Observer, she stated that ‘The group exists to protect Irish family life from contraception, which will be followed by abortion, divorce, and euthanasia. People should not be given something just because they want it. Some people want guns and drugs, but we don’t give them guns and drugs. Contraceptives are even more dangerous.’Footnote ⁸¹ Given that family planning campaigners wanted contraception to be available to single as well as married people, Kennedy, in one letter, believed that they should perhaps be called ‘Promiscuity Promoters’.Footnote ⁸²

By identifying themselves as ‘parents’ or individuals concerned with family welfare, conservative campaigners positioned themselves in direct contrast to feminist campaigners. Moreover, the age of conservative activists, who would have, for the most part, been middle-aged at the time of campaigning, meant that they contrasted with the youthfulness of members of feminist groups such as IWU and CAP. Yet, one aspect which both feminist campaigners and the IFL agreed on was their concerns about the side effects of the contraceptive pill. Writing to the Irish Times in 1975, Mary Kennedy referred to the American Food and Drugs Administration report on the contraceptive pill.Footnote ⁸³ The following year, in another letter, she asked ‘Have we so soon forgotten the thalidomide children and the tragedy of their lives?’Footnote ⁸⁴ Kennedy also alleged that the contraceptive pill might have potential long-term effects on the third and fourth generation of users of chemical contraception, and cited the work of German doctor Siegfried Ernst while also commenting that ‘genetic damage has also been noted in the USA’.Footnote ⁸⁵ In her view, if groups such as CAP were successful in having contraceptives made available, the tax payer would not only have to pay for the provision of the services but would also ‘have to provide compensation when the users suffer damage to their health’.Footnote ⁸⁶ England was often portrayed in Kennedy’s letters in a negative light, with statistics on rising rates of illegitimacy and abortion there often quoted. In 1975, she wrote: ‘In England, abortion has debased the profession of medicine and of nursing to that of paid killer, highly profitable to those involved. However, the state of the profession there at the moment must be an example to us of what can happen when the selfishness of the contraceptive society is given free rein’.Footnote ⁸⁷ Anti-British rhetoric was also common in anti-abortion discourse in the 1980s.Footnote ⁸⁸

The IFL’s concerns over the side effects of the contraceptive pill were also discussed in detail in a subsequent publication in 1975 called Alert: oral contraceptive. The publication reminded readers of the thalidomide tragedy of the 1960s where the drug was made available without adequate testing of its effects.Footnote ⁸⁹ A claims prevention letter which could be used by doctors in the US who were prescribing the pill was also included to illustrate the concerns over side effects and litigation.Footnote ⁹⁰ The publication asserted that contraception was wrong for a range of reasons, which included the fact that contraception went against the purpose of ‘the marriage act’ as designed by God. The use of artificial contraception was also believed to result in selfishness which could cause unhappy marriages or their break-up. Contraception was believed to lead to ‘psychic troubles’ as a result of the ‘frustration of the instinct of parenthood’. In addition, it was emphasised by the IFL that the legalisation of contraception would be followed by the legalisation of abortion. Concerns were also raised about how legal safeguards could be enforced to prevent young people from using contraception and about the impact of legalisation on Ireland’s small population. Finally, the IFL believed that if contraception was legalised it could result in eugenic programmes to ‘better’ the population, arguing ‘once the floodgates are opened, the tide will sweep through’ and reminding readers of the practices which occurred during the Second World War. Finally, a focus on the legalisation of contraception also distracted attention from ‘the real economic evils of society’ such as housing and unemployment.Footnote ⁹¹

A detailed section on the IUD emphasised the IFL’s belief that this acted as an abortifacient because it interfered with the implantation of the fertilised ovum in the womb.Footnote ⁹² Readers were advised to be aware of ‘humanist reformers’ who had ‘devised a very effective technique in altering social laws’ which had been particularly effective in the United Kingdom and in Southern Australia. The tactics had three stages, the first being to promote public controversy in the media about the issue in question, the second to ‘prove’ that public opinion was in favour of reform of the law, and the third was a parliamentary phase with the introduction of a private members bill ‘coupled with the isolation of opponents who are labelled fanatics or “Catholics who are trying to impose their moral views on the community”’. The IFL claimed that these tactics were being used in Ireland and that ‘the unfortunate thing is that comparatively few people seem to be aware it is happening’.Footnote ⁹³

By 1976, the group’s language around the contraception issue had become more pro-life in nature. In their publication Why you should oppose contraception, they focused on two reasons why contraceptives were wrong: the first being that ‘many so-called contraceptives are in fact abortifacients and human life is so precious that nobody has the right to kill’ and secondly that the introduction of artificial contraception would bring ‘so many other evils in its wake’, leading to rising rates of extra-marital sex, promiscuity, VD and illegitimacy and eventually the introduction of abortion in order to cover contraceptive failure.Footnote ⁹⁴ The IFL was convinced that the majority of the population did not want contraception to be legalised and felt that a referendum would illustrate this. Contraception was viewed as being ‘the wedge to break Ireland’s Catholic heritage’ and readers were advised to oppose it for the sake of their children.Footnote ⁹⁵

The IFL believed that family planning groups were concerned with the profits to be made from artificial methods of birth control rather than women’s health. In a letter to the Evening Herald in 1974, Kennedy asked why family planning clinics in Dublin ‘decry the reliability of the natural Billings Ovulation method, yet they claim to help women who have difficulty in achieving pregnancy, obviously they are able to identify the fertile time. What is the factor then which makes them push the artificial methods at all costs?’Footnote ⁹⁶ In a 1976 letter to the Irish Times, Kennedy asserted that pills and devices were being ‘pushed in this country by concerns whose motivation is purely commercial’ and that such concerns were being supported by family planning groups, ‘the young people in Irish Women United and by some in the universities’. This meant, in her view, that all publicity was being given to artificial methods and none to natural methods.Footnote ⁹⁷ In addition, Kennedy believed that Irish doctors prioritised prescribing the pill over other forms of contraception:

In Kennedy’s view, prescribing the contraceptive pill meant that doctors did not have to spend time advising on other methods which would take more explanation. Furthermore, in a letter later that year, Kennedy asserted that she believed there was opposition towards natural methods such as the Billings method because ‘there is no money to be made from showing a woman how to learn and use this method’.Footnote ⁹⁹ She also claimed in 1978 that the example of the ‘married woman with 10 children and a drunken husband has been dropped in favour of contraceptives for the young and single’ because the latter would ‘provide a more lucrative market for the trade’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

The activities and letters of the IFL received significant attention. Mrs. Ann Collins from Finglas in Dublin, writing to the Evening Herald in 1973, stated that the group had ‘a nerve trying to dictate to the Irish people on the very personal matter of family planning. It is the prerogative of myself and every other woman to have the number of children I desire and I don’t mean fifteen or sixteen [..] People like Mary Kennedy and John O’Reilly nauseate me, with their puritanical attitudes’.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Another frequent opponent was journalist Hilary Boyle, who argued that as a single woman, Kennedy could have no understanding of the challenges facing disadvantaged, married couples. For example, in one letter to the Irish Press in 1978, Boyle argued ‘if the amount spent by these single women on “false dogmas invented by men” was spent instead on helping the poor get proper homes and to limit their families to the number they can afford to feed and clothe, then one would consider them Christians and worth listening to.’ Boyle argued that Kennedy and another advocate of the Billings Method, Sister Mary O’Sullivan, ‘cannot fulminate on how wonderful the Billings method is unless they have tried both it and married life’.Footnote ¹⁰² Such comments clearly impacted on Kennedy. In an interview with the Irish Press in 1980, she remarked ‘Because you are celibate or because you are not married does not mean you don’t have feelings. You still have to get on with people’.Footnote ¹⁰³ Others wrote to newspapers defending the IFL’s activities. Following an interview between Mary Kennedy and Rodney Rice on an RTÉ radio programme in 1978, where Rice allegedly shouted down the interviewee, Maureen Fehily from Blackrock wrote to the Evening Herald to complain about Rice’s impartiality and treatment of Kennedy. She hoped that Kennedy was ‘not unduly discouraged; she can rest assured that the majority of people would endorse her views’.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Similarly, in August 1978, Marie Dunleavy MacSharry, former secretary of the Nazareth Family Movement, wrote to the Irish Independent to complain about Pat Kenny’s treatment of Mary Kennedy in an interview on RTÉ radio.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

In 1978, the IFL undertook a survey of over 1600 homes in the Dublin (Raheny) constituency of the Minister for Health, which showed that 80% were against the legalisation of contraception.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ The IFL suggested that the majority of people in the country were opposed to the legalisation of contraception and that a referendum on the subject should be held. The IFL met with Charles Haughey, Minister for Health and Social Welfare in July 1978 in order to put their medical, social and demographic objections to the legalisation of contraception.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ The group was one of a number of groups that met with Haughey.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ In their meeting with Haughey, the IFL argued that ‘laws must be based on fundamental moral principles’ and that the government was committed by the Constitution to protecting marriage and the family, both of which, they felt, would be threatened by the legalisation of contraception.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ They also raised concerns about the power that the bill would place in the hands of the medical profession, arguing that ‘in other countries it is the medical profession which performs the millions of abortions carried out’.Footnote ¹¹⁰ The IFL and their supporters were also concerned with biases in the media. In 1979, they aired their disappointment at being offered two audience seats for a discussion on the Family Planning Bill, rather than being invited to be on the discussion panel. The IFL stated that they would be boycotting the programme because they felt it would be ‘biased toward the pro-contraception lobby’.Footnote ¹¹¹ The IFL also claimed to have collected over 80,000 signatures against the legalisation of contraception.Footnote ¹¹²

From 1977, the IFL became a member of the newly founded umbrella group the Council of Social Concern (later COSC) along with the Nazareth Family Movement., the League of Decency, Society to Outlaw Pornography, Parent Concern, Youth Alert, and Veritas Christi.Footnote ¹¹³ COSC was affiliated with the Knights of St. Columbanus, a Catholic fraternal organisation.Footnote ¹¹⁴ According to John O’Reilly, who joined the Knights in the early 1970s ‘When the Charlie Haughey Bill on contraception came up, they decided they wanted to set up a committee to sort of reach a decision on stuff that arises’. COSC was chaired by Nial Darragh with O’Reilly acting as vice-chairman and it published a booklet, The Gift of Life in 1978 which was edited by O’Reilly. The booklet was sent to bishops, politicians and members of the medical profession. Similar to other publications O’Reilly had been involved in, it outlined a number of key arguments against artificial contraception. Conception was deemed to take place at the moment of fertilisation with prevention of this union classed as abortion. Only natural forms of family planning were advocated. Artificial contraceptives were deemed to be damaging to health, unreliable, ‘damaging to personality, interpersonal relationships and personal dignity’, and ‘pushed by profit’, while they were also said to cause increases in VD, promiscuity, illegitimacy, abortion and marital breakdown.Footnote ¹¹⁵ In relation to the proposals to legalise contraception, the publication argued that the government ‘should legislate against the importation of contraceptives for ‘free’ distribution’ and instead provide sponsorship for natural methods of family planning.Footnote ¹¹⁶ John O’Reilly explained that ‘it was through the Council of Social Concern that we ruminated for instance what was going to happen to stop the further deterioration for instance, after the contraceptive period’.

Members of the IFL, in common with family planning and feminist activists, were disappointed with the 1978 Health (Family Planning Bill). A December 1978 statement read as follows:

While the IFL ultimately did not succeed in its key aims around contraception, it did, in John O’Reilly’s view, have some success:

In a letter to the Irish Independent in 1979, the IFL was one of a number of groups under the banner of COSC which expressed its indignation at the operation of the illegal CAP shop detailed in Chapter 7, Contraceptives Unlimited. Although a complaint had been lodged about the shop the week it opened, seven weeks later, it continued to operate ‘with impunity, despite the fact that those responsible for the operation have stated, in the press, that they are knowingly breaking the law’. Chairman of COSC Nial Darragh expressed his frustration that ‘the law should be fragrantly broken, our Constitution violated and the responsibility passed from one to another without any action being taken in the matter is, to say the least, scandalous.’Footnote ¹¹⁸ By 1979, the organisations affiliated with COSC also included STOP, Christian Political Action Movement, Mná na hÉireann, Pro Fide and the Concerned Doctors Group.Footnote ¹¹⁹ It later became a member of the Pro-Life Amendment Campaign to push for the eighth amendment.

8.3 The Responsible Society

Following the legalisation of contraception for bona fide family planning purposes in 1979, conservative groups began to mobilise on the abortion issue. One such group was the Irish branch of the Responsible Society, founded in 1980. The Responsible Society had originally been established in England in 1971 and its key concerns were around issues of sexual morality, and in particular sex education and the morality of young people.Footnote ¹²⁰ The Irish branch was founded following a public meeting in March 1980 where Valerie Riches, of The Responsible Society in England, gave a talk on the theme of ‘The Permissive Society and its Lessons for Ireland’. Riches’ paper was followed by talks by Professor John Bonnar and Dr. Austin Darragh. Following this event, the group who organised it decided to form an Irish branch of the society. John O’Reilly, who had been chairperson of the IFL, was secretary of the Responsible Society and Bernadette Bonar, a pharmacist, was chairperson, with other committee members including John Lee, Julia Lane, Denis Barror, Brian Forbes, Helen O’Donnell and Sheila Killian.Footnote ¹²¹ The organisation published a newsletter called Response which it sent to members along with the newsletter of the British organisation. According to John O’Reilly, ‘We published about 1500 copies of our Response that we sent every quarter. But, we sent them actually to certain politicians and to bishops. We also sent them to some prominent lay people. We’d send round to the people who were on the mailing list’. The Responsible Society focused on a range of moral issues including primarily abortion, sex education, divorce, and later AIDS and IVF but for the purposes of this chapter, I will focus on their work on the contraception issue.

In common with the previous groups, the Responsible Society was inspired by the work of conservative campaigners both in the United Kingdom and United States. Bernadette Bonar, the chairperson of the Irish branch of the Responsible Society, explained to me:

Bonar was concerned that similar practices could occur in Ireland. When I asked if she was worried about this, she told me, ‘Oh, we’d no doubt. We had no doubt, no. No doubt in the world’. Moreover, her testimony raises concerns about individualism and the power of governments to introduce legislation relating to moral issues. Using the example of abortion, she stated, ‘But you see the English people had no say, that’s the important thing there. Neither had the American people. It was foisted on them’. In addition, Bonar expressed her concerns about the increasing liberal attitudes of the medical profession and the impact of the secularisation of Irish society:

Father Paul Marx was also invited by the group to give a talk in September 1980 during which he referred to abortion in the United States and Britain, particularly drawing attention to how ‘children were encouraged to experiment with sex as a result of lurid sex education courses financed by the State’ and how, as a result, ‘the incidence of VD, unwanted pregnancy and abortion soared among adolescents’.Footnote ¹²² Professor Charles Rice, of Notre Dame University, the author of a number of pro-life books, provided a lecture on pro-life constitutional amendments to the group in June 1981.Footnote ¹²³ Valerie Riches also regularly visited Ireland to give talks on topics such as sex education.Footnote ¹²⁴

While most of the Responsible Society’s energies were focused on the Pro-Life Amendment Campaign in the early 1980s, their newsletters, letters to the press, and public talks also addressed their concerns regarding the liberalisation of the law around contraception. For instance, in 1984, they reported on the government’s plans to amend the Family Planning Act so that condoms would be made available in chemists to persons over aged 18 rather than on prescription. The Responsible Society argued that the proposed bill ‘would be society’s seal of approval on sexual relations outside marriage and all the evils which flow therefrom, illegitimate births, abortions, venereal disease et cetera’ and that if the bill passed, ‘other ‘reforms’ such as illegitimacy, adoption and finally Divorce would be considerably easier’.Footnote ¹²⁵ In a talk given to the Women’s Political Association in Waterford in 1984, Bernadette Bonar echoed these sentiments and stated that politicians ‘have an enormous responsibility to represent the views of the electorate and not be influenced by minority pressure groups who for ideological or commercial reasons seek to destroy the traditional moral values of our Society’.Footnote ¹²⁶ The Responsible Society members were clearly concerned with the issue of young people and promiscuity, believing that the passing of the bill and ‘the diversification of outlets is such as to amount to an uncontrollable situation and it is widely admitted that contraceptives for 18 year olds, in practice means 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 year olds as well.’Footnote ¹²⁷

It is important to note here that the views of conservative groups were not unusual and were mirrored in the responses of many members of the general public. Surviving correspondence sent to the Irish government indicates that many agreed that the amendment to the Family Planning Act would be a step too far. Nora Hurley, writing to the Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald in 1985, stated that ‘this bill can only promote fornication’ and ‘if this bill is passed, and I hope and pray that Our Blessed Lady will not allow it as it will bring a curse on our beloved country, your chances of winning the next election are nil’.Footnote ¹²⁸ Jerry Gallagher, a retired teacher, writing to Garret FitzGerald, used stronger language, stating in a typed letter with the subject ‘Re: Family Planning Bill’ the brief statement ‘Next time I hope Maggie Thatcher disembowels you. Out * Out * Out *’Footnote ¹²⁹ Similarly, writing to then President Hillery, Maureen Kennedy, the mother of six children, pleaded for him not to sign the 1985 amendment to the Family Planning Act, believing it ‘will destroy the fabric of our society and weaken the moral behaviour of our young people, and so, also undermine the family’.Footnote ¹³⁰ Writing to the Taoiseach in February 1985, Sheila Diskin stated ‘I do not consider that young girls should have use of contraceptives and I think they should only be given by G.P.s to married people. We have seen the rise in syphilis and V.D. in other countries where they are readily available’.Footnote ¹³¹ A letter to Minister for Health Barry Desmond from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul Foxrock Conference stated that ‘We are greatly concerned and believe that this proposition of yours if implemented, would seriously demoralise our youth and lower the standard of their social behaviour.’Footnote ¹³²

Figure 8.2 Protest at Leinster House/Dáil Éireann during the debate inside Dáil Éireann on the Health (Family Planning) Amendment. Protestors from the Socialist Workers Movement came face-to-face with anti-contraception activists.

Photograph by Derek Speirs.

It is clear that the Responsible Society and other conservative groups in the 1980s came together on the issue of abortion. Bernadette Bonar explained that, ‘We went completely behind the SPUC. We were clubbed up with them. Joined forces. We had great meetings. Tremendous meetings. Everyone was just … Marvellous really.’ Similarly, John O’Reilly’s testimony regarding his involvement in conservative organisations shows the overlap between the different groups:

Ultimately, the campaigns against contraception in the 1970s provided campaigners with the skills, experience and networks which would be crucial to campaigns against abortion in the early 1980s and beyond.

8.4 Conclusion

Anti-contraception campaigners represented an important social movement in 1970s and 1980s Ireland. The arguments put forward by conservative groups are revealing and highlight new ways of thinking about popular individualism in Ireland in this period, illustrating how, as in Britain, by the 1970s, people were becoming more insistent in ‘defining and claiming their individual rights, identities and perspectives’.Footnote ¹³³ Tools such as petitions and statistical evidence were used to back up activists’ arguments, while they also drew on a rhetoric of moral decline and otherness in their publications. They not only indicate deep-rooted tensions around the modernisation of Ireland but also highlight the persistence of early twentieth-century postcolonial ideas that Ireland was under attack from ‘foreign’ influences, usually Britain.

Anti-contraception groups in Ireland which emerged in the 1970s were concerned with a number of issues. Earlier groups such as Mná na hÉireann and the Nazareth Family Movement focused on a nationalist rhetoric that prioritised Catholic values and a vision of a morally pure Ireland, in contrast with Britain. As such, their campaigns had echoes of the anti-contraception rhetoric of the 1930s which classed contraception as a ‘foreign’ influence. With the establishment of the Irish Family League and engagement of individuals such as John O’Reilly, the anti-contraception arguments focused on the health risks of artificial contraception and concerns that its legislation would lead to other perceived social evils, in particular abortion. Yet, groups such as the Irish Family League and the Responsible Society were also influenced by the work of conservative groups in the United States and United Kingdom and these transnational networks were important to the trajectories of these groups.

Figure 8.3 Pro-life march and rally, GPO, Dublin, 12 May 1979.

Photograph by Clodagh Boyd.

Moving into the 1980s, the perceived moral decline of young people was an important theme in campaigners’ propaganda, reflecting fears about the expansion of access to contraception which they believed would result in increased promiscuity. However, at the heart of campaigners’ concerns was a fear that following the legalisation of contraception, abortion would follow. While the Family Planning Act of 1979 was a significant disappointment to conservative campaigners, the networks and campaigns formed against contraception in the 1970s provided an important bedrock for anti-abortion campaigns to follow in the 1980s and 1990s, and also enabled activists to form key alliances with international campaigners, which would prove crucial to these later campaigns.