Church and State tried to silence us, but Gen-X women had new tools

For survivors of Bessborough, Cindi Bonny's article was both mirror and megaphone, confirmation that what we lived through was real and an invitation to keep speaking, writes Nóra Flaherty

Bessborough mother and baby home was part of a  system engineered to control female bodies, preserve male reputations and export infants like contraband. Picture: Jim Coughlan

They tried to make us Gen-X women the silent generation.

They misjudged their target. We had Walkmans pumping riot-grrrl rage into our ears, a No Disco vocabulary for resistance and most fatefully for Ireland an instinctive distrust of moral lecturing from any pulpit. We were the wrong generation to try to hush, and nowhere is that clearer than in the unfinished story of Bessborough.