If you don’t know about the Magdalene Asylums/Magdalene Laundries you should.

They form a crucial chapter in the flesh and blood consequences of what can and has happened to women and children when the Catholic church gains control over a woman’s reproductive capacity and her life.

Visit  Justice for Magdalenes.

Then the memorial statue in Galway, while you still can. (Also see the latest press release, in pdf form, on the efforts to save it.)

Despite the number of babies sent on into adoptions, other babies graves are still being discovered, see Bethany infants buried in unmarked graves for example, from this past May.

Go see the text of the stones,  read the names of women enslaved by these institutions who died in them.

It’s a chapter all too many would like to tear out of the books, pretending it never happened.

The root of the problem remains, this hatred of women, and efforts to control their reproductive capacity didn’t end with the Laundries.