FAMILY PLANNING:ALLOWING CONTRACEPTION into Ireland would lead to anarchy, euthanasia and incest, aggrieved letter-writers warned the taoiseach Jack Lynch in 1978. State papers just released include several hundred letters from people opposing the legalising of contraception sales.
They were writing as the government prepared to regularise the situation following the McGee Supreme Court ruling of 1973 which found that a ban on the sale of contraceptives violated a married couple's constitutional right to privacy.
Major Vivion de Valera, then a TD and managing director of the Irish Press, wrote to Jack Lynch in April 1978 and complained that he was being "bombarded with all sorts of well-meaning but ill-informed representations on contraception, very largely from virgins of both sexes, whether by design or default".
How he established the virginity of his correspondents is not explained.
He was writing after an outraged constituent contacted the taoiseach to complain that de Valera had not responded to her letter, two months after she wrote to him. "No doubt you will appreciate how angry I am," she told Mr Lynch.
A few months earlier, a letter-writer from Clare told the attorney general that the people did not trust judges on the contraception issue and suspected that they were all Freemasons.
"These judges have left the law open-ended and yet they are not being prosecuted for bedevilling the Constitution and flooding the country with vice," an FJ O'Meara wrote.
"Sewer maggots are clean, when compared with the mental outlook of sworn Freemasons. Why should we not have good Catholic judges in our own Catholic country?" he wrote, putting the latter sentence in capital letters for added emphasis.
"Do you think we are all fools?"
A mother of two from Limerick told the taoiseach that children could be born "mongoloid" because of the Pill and could be mutilated at birth if an IUD failed to prevent conception.
"There is no good in this, only evil," a Mrs Dooley wrote. Allowing the sale of contraception would be "the greatest misfortune to ever befall Ireland", she warned.
"Among these problems will be demand for abortion, sterilisation, nurses leaving hospitals because of their conscience not allowing them to assist at abortions, VD, which as you know has reached epidemic proportions in societies where contraception etc, is legal."
Writing from Canada, a Mrs Geoghegan enclosed an article from the Vancouver Sun which said that thousands of Irish women travelled to Britain for abortions every year.
"I have been away from Ireland for some years but I find it very difficult to believe that Irish women have become so decadent that they resort to abortion," she wrote. "There may be some bad and immoral people in Ireland but only a minority I should think. Not thousands surely?"
There were many letters from Irish people living in Britain, including a Sister Veronica who pleaded to Jack Lynch: "In God's name 'have thou nothing to do with these pagan practices'". She said it was "devilish legislation" and would tarnish his name. From Worcester, a Mrs Aitken predicted that contraception would lead to a "moral and physical rot setting in". Problems would include "pre-marital sex increased out of all proportion, divorce . . . abortion . . . handicapped children not wanted, euthanasia and incest made legal . . . age of consent done away with".
And from Cavan, a J Kelleghan told Mr Lynch that the nation was looking to him in desperation. "Don't fail them - don't fail the nation - don't fail the world. If you want to prevent anarchy in this nation you must make a stand now.
"There will be an anarchical outcry from a vocal minority but 90 per cent of the people will stand by you."
Anarchy did not ensue in November 1980 when the Health (Family Planning) Act, 1979 came into force, giving people the right to buy contraceptives with medical prescriptions. It was famously described by the sponsoring minister Charles Haughey as "an Irish solution to an Irish problem".
