Prepare to get angry.
I unfortunately fell back into the bad habit of doom scrolling. And it was so discouraging to watch what happens online. The increased amount of abuse towards women, calling for them to not be able to vote, taking away resources for single parents (because sure, lets punish the parent who stayed), and the double standard of women's sexuality has been gut wrenching for me.
Christmas Eve I read a book called "Witchcraft for Wayward Girls" by Grady Hendrix. I read it in one day. Now while its fiction, its factually based on what happened in homes for unwed mothers in the US- a grandchild of the Magdalene Laundries of Ireland. This double standard is so ingrained, so enmeshed in our culture and society and since the Dobbs decision, those homes - where so much abuse, fraud (gasp), coercion and trafficking happened, are now increasing in number.
Women will never be free and equal if we acquiesce, if we cave, if we allow it, if we carry shame that was never ours to begin with. We shatter those standards by first learning about them and what they have done to the women before us.
1803 Offences Against the Person Act (Lord Ellenborough’s Act)
1828 Offences Against the Person Act
1837 Offences Against the Person Act
1861 Offences Against the Person Act, Sections 58–59
Infant Life Preservation Act 1929
Abortion Act 1967 (UK)
Lane Committee Report, Report of the Committee on the Working of the Abortion Act (1974)
Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) historical ethics reports
Brookes, Barbara. Abortion in England, 1900–1967. Croom Helm.
Fisher, Kate. Birth Control, Sex, and Marriage in Britain 1918–1960. Oxford University Press.
McLaren, Angus. A History of Contraception: From Antiquity to the Present Day. Blackwell.
Williams, Glanville. The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law.
Irish Department of Justice. The Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries (McAleese Report), 2013.
O’Sullivan, M. The Irish Magdalene Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment. Manchester University Press.
Smith, James M. Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment. University of Notre Dame Press.
Finnegan, Frances. Do Penance or Perish: A Study of Magdalen Asylums in Ireland. Oxford University Press.
Luddy, Maria. Prostitution and Irish Society, 1800–1940. Cambridge University Press.
Raftery, Mary & O’Sullivan, Eoin. Suffer the Little Children: The Inside Story of Ireland’s Industrial Schools.
BBC Panorama investigative reporting on the Laundries
Irish Times archives (historical reporting on Magdalene institutions)
UN Committee on the Rights of the Child briefs on Irish institutional abuses
Joint Oireachtas Committee hearings on institutional abuse
Solinger, Rickie. Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade. Routledge.
Fessler, Ann. The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade. Penguin.
Kunzel, Regina. Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890–1945. Yale University Press.
National Florence Crittenton Mission Archives
Women’s Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, early 20th-century records on “unmarried mothers”
Maza, Sarah. Work on U.S. adoption coercion practices
Original court records from state maternity homes (various—primarily Minnesota, Tennessee, New York)
Liberty Godparent Home archives, Liberty University (reporting, survivor testimony, investigative journalism)
Liberty Lost podcast and transcripts (primary oral history from survivors)
Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute reports
New York Times investigative reports (1950s–1990s) on maternity homes and adoption coercion
Senate Subcommittee hearings on adoption abuses (1970s–1980s)
Social Security Bulletin archives on “Aid to Dependent Children” (ADC) and out-of-wedlock births