I was treated ‘like pariah’ on contraception ads: Robinson
FORMER President Mary Robinson said that she was treated as ‘a pariah’ when she tried to lift the ban on contraception advertising in the early 1970s.
‘I completely underestimated the reaction,’ she recalls in a documentary to air tomorrow night. ‘Suddenly I was a pariah. I was denounced by bishops on pulpits. Archbishop McQuaid required a letter to be read out to say that this measure would be and would remain a curse upon the country.’
First elected to the University of Dublin panel of Seanad Éireann in 1969, she tried to have the ban on contraception advertising lifted.
‘We didn’t even get a first reading,’ she said of the proposed Bill.
She was speaking in RTÉ documentary No Country For Women which airs tomorrow at 9.35pm on RTÉ One. It explores Irish women’s lives since achieving the vote 100 years ago.
Mrs Robinson told the filmmakers she believes ‘severe Catholicism’ post independence had the most negative impact for women.