‘If she had not that pain, she would have the pain of labour’: abortion in nineteenth-century Ireland

By Elaine Farrell
Published in Women's History Review, January 2026.
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Abstract

Focusing on a sample of seventy-eight abortion or attempted abortion cases from across nineteenth-century Ireland, this article demonstrates the importance of money, time, knowledge and access during a period when abortion was illegal. Qualitative evidence points to a variety of methods to induce a miscarriage, including the ingestion of drugs or other substances, the use of instruments, herbal remedies, bloodletting, and other non-medical techniques. The advertisement of British-based commercial abortifacients in Irish newspapers, and abortion tourists from Britain in the records, point to shared experiences of reproductive control. But both in cases where women wanted an abortion and those where they did not, there is some evidence of agency and autonomy. As demonstrated in this article, accomplices were also frequently involved in abortion cases, particularly the men connected to the pregnancies, although it must be acknowledged that the woman who acted alone is likely underrepresented in the historical records on abortion. The individual stories shed much light on abortion in nineteenth-century Ireland but are also revealing of lived experiences beyond, including courtship and marriage practices, reproductive knowledge, romantic, familial and employer/employee relationships, and networks of information.