The 1992 law, when it first appeared, was framed as a response to AIDS (Kennedy 1992). It provided that condoms (“contraceptives”) Footnote 40 could be sold to anyone over the age of 17 in most ordinary retail outlets, including shops or pubs. Footnote 41 However, the law maintained an age limitFootnote 42; Unmarried teens under the age of 17 still need a doctor`s prescription to legally buy a condom. Footnote 43 It also maintained the prohibition on the sale of vending machines, outlets, street vendors or schools, sports centres and youth clubs. Footnote 44 The free distribution of condoms remained largely illegal. Footnote 45 The exclusion of vending machines from the 1992 Act was also controversial in Parliament. Footnote 46 Even before Condom Sense`s efforts, the family planning movement and student unions had used vending machines; since at least the early 1980s. The new National AIDS Strategy Committee (Ministry of Health, 2000, 29) and the State Medical Officer of Health responsible for AIDS policyFootnote 47 recommended that it be legal to distribute condoms free of charge and sell them to vending machines. However, the government would not separate condom distribution from the legal presumption of surveillance. The new Minister of HealthFootnote 48 stated that she discourages parents from being concerned that the availability of condoms “arouses curiosity and directs children to sex.” Footnote 49 Major Catholic bishops condemned any liberalization of the condom law, and the government appeared to comply. The 1992 law was a difficult cut; While AIDS awareness reinforced the sense of futility of restricting access to condoms, it did not extinguish the desire for control. Clearly, activists` capacity for legal adaptation and improvisation was limited, and they sometimes encountered resistance.
States` practices of tolerance are divided along lines that are only partially predictable. Law enforcement was often directed at activists who were already at risk elsewhere, such as the distributors of the radical feminist action program on contraception,112 or otherwise subject to criminal law, such as sex workers.113 Law enforcement cases also focused on certain moments of heightened political tensions over reproductive freedom. It is significant in this regard that family planning clinics were subjected to increased police surveillance in the run-up to the 1983 referendum on abortion. In 1984 and 1985, attempts were made to sue Well Woman and FPS114 for selling condoms. Conservative state agents may have felt invigorated by public antipathy toward family planning clinics suspected of facilitating women`s access to abortion. This was something some activists expected – and to determine their clinics` cautious approach to abortion accordingly.115 Thus, activists` relationships with state agents (when they met) fell into a careful choreography of the (un)unacceptable, in which the relative power and legitimacy of their distribution projects changed depending on circumstances. Changes in the legal status of condoms in black letters have certainly had consequences for activists` strategies and the meaning of their own position on the law. However, this internal technical change is only a small part of the history of illegality here.
A constant feature of the activists` experience was the feeling of being in a position of cross-border marginality from the law, which affected both their perception of themselves and their position in Irish society. It is this complex position of “outlaw” that we examine under the abbreviation “illegality”. Often, even our informants described their experiences as simple familiar dichotomies between what was “legal” and what was not. At the same time, the stories they told shook these binaries. These are stories of illegal occupation. They show that illegality is experienced as a set of uncertain, changing, varied and selectively executed political practices, constantly characterized by complex choreographies of negotiation between state and non-state actors. It was a very small store, it was almost like a kiosk, you know, with a table and a chair, I don`t think there was a phone or anything, and a few boxes behind it, it was minimalist, and a variant of the price list used by FPS had officially entered as a price list and basically hung on the wall. You know, these are the prices for these items, you know, a pack of condoms is so. That`s it, we just opened the door.
I think we made up a sign and put it in the window to throw it away.145 Moreover, in 1988, the courts were difficult places for reproductive rights activists. Pro-life organisations have used the new constitutional ban on abortion to carry out a criminal prosecution campaign against groups that advise and provide information to women travelling to the UK to terminate their pregnancies. The Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC) successfully ended Open Door Counselling by launching a successful constitutional lawsuit against it and imposing high costs on Well Woman in the same litigation. Footnote 28 Shortly after the Virgin booth opened, SPUC cracked down on student associations that were disseminating information about abortion. Footnote 29 The open illegal sale could have caused similar difficulties for IFPA.