4 - Contraception

Summary

In the McGee judgment, (1973) the Supreme Court affirmed the right of a married couple to plan their family. Family planning clinics, and access to condoms. Students’ unions played a key role – reflecting the expansion in higher education. Opinion polls show increasing support for legislative reform, but a majority of voters in rural areas remained opposed, and most of those favouring reform wanted contraception to be restricted to married couples. Irish women’s organisations were divided on the issue. Women journalists played a key role in informing their readers about contraceptive and contact details for family planning outlets, and second-wave feminists were active in the radical wing of the family planning movement. Women were also prominent in the conservative pressure groups that emerged during the 1970s; these were modelled on anti-abortion movements in Britain and the United States. By the end of the decade the Billings method of ‘natural’ family planning, which was mainly led by women, was being promoted as an opportunity for Ireland to demonstrate that fertility control was feasible without re-course to ‘artificial’ methods of contraception.