Search Results for 'Irish Family Planning Association'

What dominated our news and much of our conversations during the 1970s (at least in the early years), was the deteriorating crisis in Northern Ireland. When I think of that decade I remember the initial hope that something would be settled quickly rather than letting it drag on fuelled by appallingly bad political decisions, thuggery, and deeply imbedded hatred. Seamus Heaney remarked that in the early 1970s ‘there was a promise in the air as well as fury and danger’. But in Northern Ireland any nervous sense of hopeful expectation quickly soured; as Heaney recalled: ‘Soon enough it all went rancid.’ In John Montague’s poem The Rough Field, he observes: ‘In the dark streets, firing starts.’

I get both embarrassed and amused, in an hysterical sort of a way, reading back over the recent social history of poor Cathleen Ní Houlihan. Particularly when it touches on anything sexual. It is surprising that any of us were born at all, such was the misery caused at the mention that anyone might be enjoying a healthy sexual relationship with a partner. The impression was given that everyone who had sexual contact outside marriage was not only in a state of serious sin, but that they were some kind of social pariah, to be scorned and driven away from normal society. Even sex within marriage could be shaky. It really was a subject that could not be discussed in public at all without inviting legions of self-righteous men and women out on the streets proclaiming well-meaning but ill-informed opinion.

European Cervical Cancer Prevention Week will take place from January 22 to 28 with events taking place all over Europe to raise awareness about cervical cancer prevention.

Parents of teenage girls will be relieved to hear steps are being taken by a local pharmacy to ensure that their daughters will have access to the much-debated cervical cancer vaccine at a reduced price in the coming months.

The third World Contraception Day takes place on Saturday September 26 specifically targeting 18 to 25-year-olds. The theme of this year’s campaign is Your Life, Your Voice: Talk Contraception. Its objective is to encourage teenagers in particular to talk to people they trust, so they have all the information they need to prevent an unplanned pregnancy or sexually transmitted infection.