On May 22, 1971, forty-seven members of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement (IWLM) boarded the 8am train from Dublin to Belfast. Their aim was to purchase contraceptives in the north, where contraception was legal under UK law, and to travel back to Dublin with them in order to highlight the hypocrisy of Irish law, which… Read more →
Tag: Women’s Liberation Movement
The Pill Kills: Women’s Health and Feminist Activism
On December 16, 1975, a group of Washington, D.C. area women’s health activists held the first-ever protest at the headquarters of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The demonstration took the form of a “memorial service” to commemorate the thousands of women who had died from using the contraceptive pill and other estrogen-containing drugs, and… Read more →
You Know What? Equality Feminism is Crap
In the wake of the Women’s March, one thing is clear — we haven’t resolved a debate that has been at the heart of feminism since 1848. What, if anything, does women’s equality mean? Does it mean we’re equal with men? Does it mean something else based on our physical and social status as women?… Read more →
Adventures in the Archives: The Dangers of Legal Abortion
This summer I worked with Professor Carolyn Herbst Lewis and three other students on a research project in which we explored the history of reproductive health care in Chicago. Part of our summer included a trip to Chicago to do archival research on our subjects, and, after a month of poring over secondary research, I… Read more →