Clair Wills speaks on sexual secrecy and abortion access in Ireland

The Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies hosted author and Cambridge professor Clair Wills as part of its Fall 2024 speaker series. In her lecture on September 27, entitled “Making Sense of the Missing: the Family, the Church and ‘the Home’ in Twentieth-century Irish Society,” Wills discussed her book Missing Persons, or My Grandmother’s Secrets. Additionally, she spoke about the history of sexual secrecy, unwanted pregnancies, and homes for single mothers in Ireland.

Wills, who has authored several pro-abortion articles, including “Quickening, or How to Plot an Abortion,” is a public advocate for access to contraception and abortion. She told the Rover, “In [my] book, I write about deciding not to have an abortion when I was in my mid-twenties, and the great thing about that was I could decide. And I think if I had not had that choice, my history would have been extremely difficult.” 

When asked by the Rover about her abortion stance conflicting with Catholic teaching, Wills responded, “My experience on this comes from doing this research into the way that Catholic institutions have looked after, or more likely not looked after, women and their children.”

In her lecture, Wills told the story of her own cousin, Mary, who was born out of wedlock in a home for unmarried women and their children. With her legitimacy rejected by the family, Mary’s life was kept a secret. By the time Wills knew of her cousin’s existence, it was too late to meet her—Mary had committed suicide.

As she searched for information about Mary, Wills investigated “Mother and Baby Homes,” Irish religious institutions for single mothers and their children. Alongside industrial workhouses and state-run schools and orphanages, “Mother and Baby Homes” were Ireland’s response to illegitimate pregnancies in the 1900s. According to Wills, families of single mothers often forced them to disappear from society and to enter these institutions.

Using her personal story to emphasize the tragedy and frequency of such occurrences in twentieth-century Ireland, Wills highlighted the institutional abuse that often occurred within Mother and Baby Homes, citing the discovery of a mass grave of nearly 800 children’s bodies in a septic tank in Galway. 

Regarding the Catholic Church’s stance on abortion, Wills said to the Rover, “When you look at those 800 babies deposited in the septic tank, you have to question the extent to which the Catholic Church really does care about children.” 

During the lecture, Wills also raised questions about sexual secrecy, familial violence, and the Church’s role in sending women into homes that, according to her, “governed and controlled Irish sexual and reproductive lives.”

After exploring why families may have consented to a system of “disappearing” mothers and their children, Wills finished her talk with an exhortation. Wills asked the audience to take accountability for society’s treatment of single mothers and their children and to bring issues of unwanted pregnancies and sexual shame to the light.

She told her listeners, “My family kept the secrets of sex and pregnancy and childbirth for a mixture of reasons, and some of them were good, but there is no sense in keeping those secrets anymore. We will never make sense of the missing if we don’t talk about them.”

Wills claimed that institutional abuses in Ireland and other countries are a result of limited access to contraception and abortion, saying, “Once reproductive rights are curtailed, then you end up having institutions to look after people who will be left without resources, and those institutions in themselves can [become] repressive.” 

Abortion was banned in Ireland under the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution until 2018, when the 36th Amendment allowed the Irish parliament to amend the country’s ban.

In a comment to the Rover, Wills called Ireland’s abortion legislation a lesson to the United States, saying, “Conservative Catholics were nervous that [legal contraception] would be a kind of open door … to legalizing abortion. … So they brought in the Eighth Amendment, which made abortion completely anti-constitutional. Not just illegal, but completely illegal. And that has caused untold deaths of parents, deaths of mothers, deaths of children.”

Freshman Deirdre Tomasek commented on Wills’ pro-abortion stance compared to the Catholic mission of the university, saying, “I think if she were trying to make people pro-abortion, then it would be contradictory to the mission. But if she’s sharing her story in such a way that we can learn things from it … then it could still be a part of the mission.” 

Tomasek continued, “If [Wills] was able to respect the pro-life stance and also … bring to light the ways improvement is needed, then we can be united in our goal of better supporting expecting mothers, though maybe the way we seek to give that help takes different directions.” 

Senior Kade Kruer shared his impressions from the talk with the Rover, saying, “I’m not an Irish studies major, so it’s surprising to hear that Ireland had those institutions for women who got pregnant out of wedlock. It’s not surprising there was a lot of shame around it, given the Catholic culture, but to actually have state-run institutions for those women, it was quite shocking.”

Kruer continued, “Notre Dame is very Catholic, just like Ireland, so I think we can take a lot from it in terms of shame and guilt.” 

In contrast, one junior minoring in Irish Studies expressed disappointment that Keough-Naughton invited Wills to speak. “As someone with Irish heritage, it’s a shame to see that Notre Dame is promoting pro-choice speakers under the Irish Studies banner.” She continued to the Rover, “I would love to see them host someone who embraces the Irish tradition of Catholicism and family life in the future.”

The Keough-Naughton Institute hosts a series of speakers each semester to explore themes such as politics, migration, hunger, and religious issues in Ireland. According to its website, the Institute is “dedicated to the study and understanding of Irish culture … in all its manifestations,” including literature, art, and music. 

Since becoming part of the Keough School of Global Affairs in 2015, the Institute for Irish Studies has “sharpened its focus on policy and forces at work in Ireland today” by promoting research on a diverse range of topics and hosting speakers such as Clair Wills.

The Keough-Naughton Institute did not respond to requests for comment.

Abby Strelow is a freshman theology major who is currently drinking only chocolate milk in order to protest the gross South Bend drinking water. Send her encouragement at astrelow@nd.edu. 

Photo Credit: Irish Rover

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