Backstreet abortionist delivers history lesson

Mamie Cadden: Backstreet Abortionist is the true story of Mamie Cadden, midwife, business woman, social rebel and, most notably of all, abortionist. Mamie was a woman who defied the social conventions and religious norms of her time, and fought back with remarkable success at times, but who was ultimately defeated by the combined forces of the church and state.

Nevertheless, she was unrepentant to the end and in her final years in the criminal Lunatic Asylum in Dundrum (as it was called then) she achieved a certain type of tranquillity and repose. One of her carers there told me of the fun and laughter she had with Mamie Cadden. This was not a broken woman. She was defeated certainly and deprived of her freedom but not penitent or living in bitter regret. The qualities of self-confidence and pride in herself were with her until the end when she died on April 20th, 1959.

But does the story of Mamie Cadden speak to us today and show us something about our country and our society now, almost 60 years later? Mamie worked in a deeply religious and increasingly conservative country all her life. The limited rights women had in the 1920s, when her career started, were constantly being eroded to such an extent that by the 1950s, when her career ended, Ireland was a much worse place to be a woman than it had been 30 years previously.

The best option for many women to escape the suffocating, poor and repressive society that was Ireland in the 1950s was emigration. Getting a job and moving to England was deeply liberating. Even for the poorest, least educated women, a job in a factory meant regular money and a chance to meet a decent man and live in a country where her status was vastly superior to that endured by her sisters back home.

It is remarkable to note that all the emigrant ballads are by and about homesick men – the women found life in England to be vastly superior to the drudgery of housework and motherhood in a country where six children was considered a small family and where an unmarried woman was a spinster, who was looked down upon as a second- or even third-class citizen.

What of Mamie’s status as an abortionist in the decades from the twenties right through to the fifties? After all, that is what she was most famous for. In the staggering hypocrisy of the time, a blind eye was turned to her activities. This in a society where women were denied access to any form of contraception, and where even casual mention of the subject was taboo. Perversely enough, it was this hypocrisy that allowed Mamie such a long career as an abortionist and it was only in the late fifties, when the zealots acted against her, that her career came to a close.

After the first publication of Mamie Cadden’s story, I was amazed at the number of older women who said to me “there was a woman like that in our area”. So it seems that abortion was practised in Ireland throughout that period, albeit clouded in secrecy. We know that this was also the case in many western European countries where similar regimes prevailed, especially in the rural areas of France and Germany. The situation was somewhat different in England, which was predominantly an urban, industrial society from the nineteenth century on.

It is evident that when women are deprived of conventional medical services relating to maternity they will always seek to find an alternative. In the Ireland of the ’40s and ’50s it was so-called “backstreet abortionists” like Mamie Cadden and other practitioners such as Henry Coleman of Merrion Square or Mary Moloney of Parkgate Street who provided this alternative. During the 1960s, anecdotal evidence tells of GPs performing abortions. Since then, with the liberalisation of the law in England and the opening up of air routes, the English-based abortion is an available option.

All along however, there is a consistent scenario: women who are refused abortion services in their own county or community will find another route. Now, in the 21st century, this route has changed again and is as least as dangerous, if not more so than the one taken by women in the last century. Now with the help of the internet, women can purchase abortifacient drugs online. Unregulated and often dangerous, this option is now increasingly used. Only the provision of safe, accessible medical options can end this trade.

This, I think, is what the story of Mamie Cadden can teach us. Women will seek out abortion services no matter what the State and society tell them. If we want women to be safe then we must grasp the nettle and provide abortion services in our own state.

Mamie Cadden: Backstreet Abortionist is republished by Mericer Press this month, at €12.99