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1 results

  • 1 - Access to Contraception and Family Planning Information in Ireland from the 1920s to the 1950s

  • Laura Kelly, University of Strathclyde
  • Book:
    Contraception and Modern Ireland
    Published online:
    16 February 2023
    Print publication:
    23 February 2023, pp 21-50
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  • Summary

    This chapter highlights the profound influence of the legal and religious context on individuals’ choices around family planning in the early twentieth century. Individuals’ accounts suggest that their parents lacked knowledge of contraception and complied with Church teachings. Yet, the documentation of court cases relating to contraception in the Irish press, and letters from Irish men and women to Marie Stopes complicates this picture and suggests a tension between what oral history respondents think about their parents’ reproductive health experiences and the lived realities of men and women of fertile age in early post-independent Ireland. This chapter provides clear evidence of resistance and attempts at resistance. In addition, the letters from Irish men and women to Marie Stopes suggest that many Irish men and women perceived a lack of access to birth control as having a negative impact on both maternal and infant health.