Against all the odds: 50 years of Family Planning Clinic in Limerick

THE EFFORTS of a group who fought against the odds in 1970s’ Limerick will be recognised in a special film, premiering this weekend.

It’s 50 years since the Family Planning Clinic opened in the city against a backdrop of huge opposition from the Church and the State.

From 7:30pm on Saturday night at the Millennium Theatre in the Technological University of the Shannon campus at Moylish, a special documentary marking the golden anniversary will be screened. It will be followed by a concert.

Since 1975, the Limerick Family Planning Clinic has provided support to women across the city, county and further afield.

Nowadays, it offers a full suite of services, including, notably, the provision of free smear tests for women, in an effort to reduce the occurrence of cervical cancer.

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Based at modern offices at Mallow Street in the city centre, it’s a far cry from its humble beginnings, where, initially, only a listening ear and a limited supply of condoms could be provided.

Flashback to the 1970s, and Ireland was a very different place for women.

They did not enjoy any kind of legal and financial autonomy.

Divorce was illegal, as was abortion - a situation which only changed after a 2018 referendum. Contraceptives were banned in a country still dominated by the Catholic Church.

It was against this backdrop that a group of individuals set to work on opening a clinic, offering support to women, in a world where it wasn’t readily available.

Mary O’Donnell, who lives in Garryowen, was in her late teens when the germ of the idea started to form, and was instrumental in the founding of the clinic.

There was a lot of hard work in the lead up, she explained, saying: “We may have first opened our doors in 1975 but we had spent a year or more getting people to support the idea. It was illegal. It would be like if you wanted to open a gun shop today. You couldn’t do it in the normal way you could open a business.”

One of the earliest supporters of the clinic was former Labour TD, the late Jim Kemmy.

It was his connections with the union movement which helped those behind the surgery secure the Mechanic’s Institute at Hartstonge Street in the city centre - very few landlords were prepared to engage with the group.

Recruiting medical staff to the facility posed another challenge.

“There were a few nurses involved. It was brave of them in many instances, because what they were doing was illegal. They were probably working for the health board and doing this in the shadows on a voluntary basis,” explained Mary.

It was the job of Mayorstone woman Ferga Grant to appoint doctors to the clinic.

“I rang a few doctors. I remember one guy in particular who lived near me. He said, ‘It’s a rat race, I really can’t be involved’.

The first doctor we got was Philip Cullen, who was in fact Protestant. He had great respect for Jim Kemmy, although he wouldn’t necessarily have voted for him. The next doctor we had was Paul O’Sullivan, the husband of Jan O’Sullivan,” she recalls.

Above: The Family Planning Clinic attracted plenty of press attention. In one article, Jim Kemmy, who played a key role in its establishment, was left holding the baby. Those who were vital to its founding and who are sadly no longer with us are remembered on the board 

While readily available in Northern Ireland, it was illegal to bring condoms into the Republic of Ireland. Mary had wanted to travel on the Contraceptive Train from Dublin to Belfast in 1971, but her parents ruled she was too young.

There were ways of getting them into the country and to Limerick though, and the contraception was provided in the clinic for a “suggested donation”.

“We could tell you under the counter what we thought the contribution should be, but we couldn’t sell them,” Mary said.

Doctors used a loophole in the law, which allowed the prescription of the morning-after pill for women suffering with irregular periods.

Vitally, all the provisions the clinic had were kept safely at the homes of staff and volunteers at the end of each working day - the risk of the building being raided by gardai was too great.

Something that’s stuck with Mary to this day was meeting a woman who came to the Limerick Family Planning Clinic from Mayo.

The woman, in her mid-30s, was “all grown up” to the then 23-year-old.

“It would have taken her all day to get here. I remember she said she had three or four children, and her doctor told me she was putting her life in danger having any more. The obvious question then, is what was her doctor going to do to help her? The answer to that was nothing,” Mary recalls.

“I remember standing there, thinking: who am I to be telling this woman what she could do? We were able to help her as we did have a doctor at that stage. But there was really nowhere for people like her to go. It must have taken a lot for her to go through all that.”

There was huge opposition to the new facility from the media, with Mary saying: “Would I dare mention the Limerick Leader? They editorialised against us.

“They called us the pill clinic,” she said, adding that they quoted at length any of the clergy who were going on about Jim Kemmy.

Despite this, they were not deterred, Ferga saying: “We all knew what we were doing was right. Women should have the right to choose when to have children and when not to. We weren’t going to be dictated to by the Church and doctors, the majority of whom were men.”

Saturday night’s film will feature interviews with staff of the clinic from both the past and the present, including the pioneering nurses and doctors who supported it in its earliest years.

Many of those behind the establishment of the clinic are sadly no longer with us, with Ferga zoning in on their first treasurer, Pat O’Connor.

“He really kept an eye on the money side of things. None of us really knew how to run a business, which it was really. We called him Pat O’Cautious. I don’t think we ever told him that to his face, but he would have been amused,” she laughed.

Tickets are still available for Saturday night’s premiere. Call 061-312026, or visit www.limerickfamilyplanning.ie