Legalising contraception in Ireland

During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese VietCong guerrillas built a vast network of tunnels in the south of the country as part of the insurgency against the South Vietnamese government and their American allies. The tunnel network was a key base and shelter for the North Vietna ...  Show more

In September 1991, two German hikers found a dead body while walking through Europe’s Ötzal Alps. It turned out to be a perfectly preserved 5,000-year-old mummy. The archaeologist Konrad Spindler inspected the body along with the assemblage of items recovered from the gravesite. ...  Show more

Believe it or not, it was a crime to sell contraception in Ireland between 1935 and 1979. The Irish government also banned all literature on family planning for decades as well. This had a profound impact on life in Ireland. Couples couldn't plan families or engage in recreati ...

Who should be prevented from having children? And who gets to decide? Across 20th century America, there was a battle to control birth - a battle which rages on to this day.In 1907, the state of Indiana passed the first sterilisation law in the world. Government-run institutions ...  Show more

Activist Margaret Sanger is responsible for one of the most significant medical and social changes of the 20th Century – giving women the means to control the size of their families. The former nurse, who’d witnessed the aftermath of backstreet abortions and her own mother’s prem ...  Show more

The free love of the 1960s was a crucial step in the world becoming more sex positive, but would any of it have happened without the invention of The Pill? This week, we're chatting all things birth control - how it came about, the reaction (hello again Pope Paul!), and allll the ...  Show more