Shifts in Attitude: Before
Joan McCracken: '...you could not kiss...'Anita Fream: '...you want to be a virgin...'Sylvia Clark: 'One was supposed to go from absolute celibacy... to suddenly... blossoming sexuality with one's husband...'Joan McCracken: '...we all wore girdles...'Loretta McLaughlin: '...they would burn in hell fire for eternity...'Richard Hauskenecht: '...mistakes occurred...'Joan McCracken: '...condoms were not acceptable...'Leslie Woodcock-Tentler: '...looking for another answer...'

Loretta McLaughlin | video | transcript

At this time, during my college years, there was a mission in the local big church in South Boston, St. Augustine's and redemptorist fathers were coming, three brothers. And the theme was birth control. And my mother didn't want to go alone so she made me go to the married women's group. And I tell you I had never heard anything like it. South Boston was an economically poor area of the city, big housing projects. And the women came and the priests said to them that if they were practicing birth control, that the faces of their unborn children would haunt them on their death beds. And you know, they would burn in hell fire for eternity. It sounds impossible that that sort of thing was literally being said, but it was. And I was so put off by it, and yet really shy about doing anything. But I waited and afterwards I went up and asked to speak to one of the priests and told him that I just couldn't accept it. And he said not to worry about it. And so I said, "Okay, I won't." And that was a turning point for me. I didn't buy it and I think a lot of other people were beginning not to buy it. But the effect of that sermon, that week-long sermon, that intimidation... We had five new babies in my building the next year.







After