Breaking the silence on abortion:the 1983 referendum campaign

The passing of the 1967 Abortion Act that legalised abortion in the United Kingdom (excluding Northern Ireland) was a source of controversy in the Irish Republic, where access to contraception was illegal. After 1967, increasing numbers of Irish women availed of access to abortion services in Britain while the debate about women’s right to control ... Read more

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Claims of ‘foreign funding’ of anti-amendment campaign

There were claims by some pro-amendment activists that the anti-amendment campaigners were being funded by foreign forces determined to undermine Ireland’s status as the protector of traditional Christian values. Far from this being the case, Andrew remembered how tight the budgets were and the lack of resources available to the activists:

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No more chains!

John was involved in the publication of a pamphlet, No more chains! Why you should oppose the constitutional ban on abortion, knowing that what they were doing was in contravention of the law, specifically the law on censorship that actually prohibited advocacy on the issue.

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Most vicious and refractory girls’the reformatories at Ballinasloe and Monaghan

On 2 July 1883, fifteen-year-old Bridget Carroll arrived at the Spark’s Lake reformatory in Monaghan to serve the remainder of a sentence that had been imposed on her four years earlier. She had been tried at Loughrea petty sessions in September 1879 on a charge that she ‘Did threaten to stab Anne Flynn’. She was ... Read more

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