Pills, potions, and purgatives
Women and abortion methods in Ireland, 1900-1950
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4862767 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Christophe Delay (0000-0002-7551-1062, College of Charleston, corresponding author), Cara Delay |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 479-499 |
| Publication date | 2019-04-16 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Women s History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0961-2025 • E-ISSN: 1747-583X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09612025.2018.1493138 |
| OpenAlex | W2862036829 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
This article examines women's efforts to induce miscarriage in Ireland (the Irish Free State, Éire, and the Republic) from 1900 to 1950. It demonstrates that, when possible, Irish women avoided surgical procedures, preferring instead to consume pills, potions, and purgatives to cause abortion. Irish women viewed emmenagogues and abortifacients as more natural than surgery and in keeping with women's traditions; these substances, they understood, had been used for centuries to restore menstruation and return the female body to normalcy and health. Overall, it was control—control over the methods of abortion and control over what they put into their own bodies, as well as autonomy when it came to managing their own reproductive health—that mattered most to Irish women seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Irish women's abortion efforts expose their resolve to manage their reproductive lives and thus remind us how they sometimes rejected the dictates of the conservative twentieth-century state-Church consensus, bypassing legislation and negotiating religious cultural norms
Abortion · Autonomy · Birth control · Environmental health · Family planning · Irish · Legislation · Pill · Political science · Population · Pregnancy · Psychiatry · Seclusion · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Medical History and Innovations · Medicine · Nursing
Contraception and Modern Ireland
The Ifpa youth group, the Adolescent Confidential Telephone Service and Sexual Health Activism in Ireland, c . 1984–90
Please help me, I am so miserable!’
Rifnet. A new agenda for the Irish family
No irregularity or obstruction can resist them”
Transgressing biomedical and legal boundaries
Self-managed abortion on the Island of Ireland
‘Opening Pandora’s Box’
| Unique citing works | 8 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,6 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 8 |