The Battle to Control Female Fertility in Modern Ireland

by Mary E. Daly

Overview

The Irish battle for legal contraception was a contest over Irish exceptionalism: the belief that Ireland could resist global trends despite the impact of second-wave feminism, falling fertility, and a growing number of women travelling for abortion. It became so lengthy and so divisive because it challenged key tenets of Irish identity: Catholicism, large families, traditional gender roles, and sexual puritanism. The Catholic Church argued that legalising contraception would destroy this way of life, and many citizens agreed. The Battle to Control Female Fertility in Modern Ireland provides new insights on Irish masculinity and fertility control. It highlights women's activism in both liberal and conservative camps, and the consensus between the Catholic and Protestant churches views on contraception for single people. It also shows how contraception and the Pro-Life Amendment campaign affected policy towards Northern Ireland, and it examines the role of health professionals, showing how hospital governance prevented female sterilisation. It is a story of gender, religion, social change, and failing efforts to reaffirm Irish moral exceptionalism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781009314879
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/25/2023
Pages:	334
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

Mary E. Daly is Professor Emerita in Modern Irish History, University College Dublin. She is the author of ten books and co-author of eight edited volumes, including Sixties Ireland: Reshaping the Economy, State and Society, 1957–1973 (Cambridge, 2016) and, with Eugenio F. Biagini, The Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland (2017). She was the first woman to serve as President of the Royal Irish Academy (2014–17) and was awarded a Royal Irish Academy Gold Medal in the Humanities in 2020.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Late marriages and large families: 'the enigma of the modern world'; 2. The pill, the Pope and a changing Ireland; 3. 'A bitter blow: humanae vitae and Irish society, 1968–1973; 4. Contraception, access and opposition, 1973–80; 5. 'Against sin': an Irish family planning bill, 1973–79; 6. The 1983 Pro-Life Amendment; 7. 'Bona-Fide family planning': the 1980s and 1990s; Conclusions.

Editorial Reviews

‘A magisterial survey, rich in archival material and full of surprises while deftly charting the various players and high stakes in the battle to control female fertility. Essential reading for those who want to understand why the ‘Irish solution to an Irish problem’ prevailed for as long as it did.’ Alana Harris, King’s College London

‘Mary Daly's book is substantially more than an extended case history, examining as it does developments which reflected underlying currents and factors of social and political change in what had been, up to the mid-twentieth century, a society and a polity hall-marked by the regressive forces of poverty, emigration and overarching institutional power.’ John Hogan, Dublin City University

‘The Battle to Control Female Fertility in Modern Ireland offers a brilliantly detailed examination of the history of family planning in independent Ireland. Professor Daly rightly casts Ireland's convoluted and often controversial birth control reform process as a long contest between church, state, the medical profession, moral conservatism and individualism.’ Diane Urquhart, Queen’s University Belfast

From the Publisher