“No Sense of Wrongdoing”: Abortion in Belfast 1917–1967

McCormick, Leanne

doi:10.1093/jsh/shv002

Cited by 12 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Leanne McCormick has cogently argued that in twentiethcentury Belfast young Roman Catholic women were less likely than Protestant women to know about contraception or to avail of abortion services. 67 It is unsurprising that Ellen Maloney's first sexual encounter had disastrous consequences. It was allegedly forced by John Clyne and 'through violence'.…”

Section: Immigrant Irish Womenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immigrant Irishwomen and maternity services in New York and Boston, 1860–1911

Breathnach

2022

Med. Hist.

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Medical acculturation forms a crucial part of the process of migration, and equally, the influx of migrants can shape how medical structures develop in receiving societies – nowhere is that more evident than in the American metropolis. In the late nineteenth century, few ethnic groups caused such sustained bio-hazard concerns as the Irish in America. Poverty and the sheer numbers migrating in the post-Famine (1852-) era, caused the immigrant Irish body to be pathologised, or described in medical terms, to a much greater degree and for longer than their Anglo-Saxon or German counterparts. With a particular focus on Irishwomen’s use of maternity services in New York and Boston, this article aims to elucidate the potential of medical records to flesh out the understandings of how immigrants navigated healthcare. By adopting a case study approach to hospital records in tandem with other data sources, it shows what is being lost through restrictive data protection legislation. It discusses how Irishness was politicised in the contexts of immigration, the social history of medicine and medicalisation.

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Section: Immigrant Irish Womenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immigrant Irishwomen and maternity services in New York and Boston, 1860–1911

Breathnach

2022

Med. Hist.

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“…25 In her study of women's experiences of abortion in Belfast during the first half of the twentieth-century, Leanne McCormack provides a detailed reconstruction of the kinds of female knowledge networks through which abortion information was circulating, including instances of women confirming that they had been given advice from neighbours or friends of friends. 26 The "commercial contraception" of the branded pills attempted to supplant (or at least capitalise upon) the older and less profitable networks of abortion knowledge, and one of the ways this was visible was in the "female pill" names. As was mentioned above, many patent medicines attempted spurious authority by branding themselves as having been invented by a doctor or professor -examples included Dr King's Hair Restorer or the really alarming Dr McLaughlin's Electro-Vigour electric belt, both of which were regularly advertised in Ireland's Own magazine in the early twentieth century.…”

Section: Social Purity and Free State Legislationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Clearly there was some confusion among women as to the legality of abortion, but also an awareness of how medical professionals could terminate a pregnancy. 33 The advertisements for "female pills" in the Irish press may have been carefully ambiguous, but they were not rare. Between 1890 and 1920, there were at least 2,500 advertisements for more than fifteen different brands of "female pills" in Irish newspapers alone.…”

Section: Social Purity and Free State Legislationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“No irregularity or obstruction can resist them”: advertising of abortion pills in the Irish press, 1890–1930

Rains

2021

Irish Studies Review

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This article demonstrates the extent of advertising in the Irish press in the years before and after the foundation of the Irish Free State for the "female pills" widely understood to induce abortions. These advertisements appeared very frequently in a wide range of Irish publications for several decades prior to 1922, and the article establishes the ways in which the advertisements functioned as an open secret strategically ignored by both legal and moral authorities. The style and content of the advertisements themselves, which allowed this open secret to operate in plain sight, is explored in detail, along with the context in which the advertisements were produced, circulated and likely understood by women readers. The article concludes by examining the advertisements' gradual and then complete disappearance from the Irish press, especially in light of the Free State legislation enacted during the 1920s.

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“…Similarly, Leanne McCormick's important work on abortion in Belfast has shown the significance of women's networks in the transmission of knowledge about illegal abortion and the restriction of such networks of knowledge within Protestant dominated neighbourhoods. 59 For instance, as Irish feminist campaigner Ruth Riddick, who would go on to establish the Open Door Counselling service for women experiencing crisis pregnancies, explained in an oral history interview to me: Now, needless to say, the Irish solution to an Irish problem was in place long before Charlie Haughey ever mentioned it. I remember being told by girlfriends what it is you said to which doctor to get put on the pill.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Contraceptive Pill in Irelandc.1964–79: Activism, Women and Patient–Doctor Relationships

Kelly

2020

Med. Hist.

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The twentieth-century history of men and women’s attempts to gain access to reproductive health services in the Republic of Ireland has been significantly shaped by Ireland’s social and religious context. Although contraception was illegal in Ireland from 1935 to 1979, declining family sizes in this period suggest that many Irish men and women were practising fertility control measures. From the mid-1960s, the contraceptive pill was marketed in Ireland as a ‘cycle regulator’. In order to obtain a prescription for the pill, Irish women would therefore complain to their doctors that they had heavy periods or irregular cycles. However, doing so could mean going against one’s faith, and also depended on finding a sympathetic doctor. The contraceptive pill was heavily prescribed in Ireland during the 1960s and 1970s as it was the only contraceptive available legally, albeit prescribed through ‘coded language’. The pill was critiqued by men and women on both sides of the debate over the legalisation of contraception. Anti-contraception activists argued that the contraceptive pill was an abortifacient, while both anti-contraception activists and feminist campaigners alike drew attention to its perceived health risks. As well as outlining these discussions, the paper also illustrates the importance of medical authority in the era prior to legalisation, and the significance of doctors’ voices in relation to debates around the contraceptive pill. However, in spite of medical authority, it is clear that Irish women exercised significant agency in gaining access to the pill.

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“No Sense of Wrongdoing”: Abortion in Belfast 1917–1967

Cited by 12 publications

References 29 publications

Immigrant Irishwomen and maternity services in New York and Boston, 1860–1911

Immigrant Irishwomen and maternity services in New York and Boston, 1860–1911

“No irregularity or obstruction can resist them”: advertising of abortion pills in the Irish press, 1890–1930

The Contraceptive Pill in Irelandc.1964–79: Activism, Women and Patient–Doctor Relationships

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