We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland

by Fintan O'Toole

Behind the absurd comedy, there were consequences for women. The high-dose oestrogen Pill was not suitable for some women but they used it because it was the only form of contraception they could get. At the Irish Medical Association conference in 1978, Dr Mary Henry warned: ‘because of this hypocrisy, women had suffered: too many unsuitable women were put on the pill in the past and were still on it today and Dr Henry saw them when they developed clots in the deep veins of their legs as a result.’15 The tacit arrangement also left women dependent on the goodwill of doctors, most of whom were male and Catholic. Control of their own fertility was a favour to be bestowed on women, not a right to be asserted. It was an intimate lie that required an authority figure to suspend disbelief. Women had no power, except that of playing up to the sexist stereotype of feminine duplicity. The Catholic Church itself was silently complicit with this duplicity – Catholic schools and hospitals would have ceased to function if teachers and nurses were not having awful trouble with their periods.