Beatles wives and girlfriends | Page 3 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Good question Zig, its something I’ve been wondering for a good while. Sure there is protection and birth control; however, birth control was is in its infancy. Even at with those I believe there had to be some oops in the middle of the road. Who paid the girls after Brian was dead? Meaning, girls they may have gotten pregnant after Brian’s death. 

AppleScruffJunior said
To put a massive, depressing dampener on this thread:

For use as an example a Beatle (let’s say Paul) gets a woman (Rosie) pregnant in 1960’s Ireland

Because of the Catholic Church’s strong hold on Ireland, Rosie is not allowed to abort the baby. No contraceptives were legally allowed to be purchased and sex before marriage was condemned-it was a disgrace on your family. Rosie would then have the baby (if she was lucky) at a hospital, where the baby will be taken away to be adopted by “proper parents” i.e. a married man and woman. Hopefully Rosie’s married brother/sister would take the baby but if they didn’t they would be given to an unknown couple and Rosie would never find out who took her child. The moment the child was born, the papers would be signed and the baby taken away so as not to form a “bond” between the mother and the child (heaven forbid that happens). If the family did not want to have anything to do with Rosie, she would be taken to a Magdalene’s laundry run by nuns, who would beat her, verbally abuse her and basically imprison her for the rest of her life with other women who had children out-of-marriage, prostitutes, abused women,women with mental difficulties and other ‘fallen women’. They would be forced to undertake hard physical labour, do laundry and needle work. Let it be known that the last of these laundries didn’t close until 1995. 

Also if Rosie’s child had died shortly after childbirth or was stillborn and a priest could not be summoned to baptise the baby before it died, it would be buried outside the grounds of the graveyard, as they had never been cleansed from ‘original sin’ in areas called ‘cilliní’. 

 

A grim history of the control the Catholic Church once had (and in some ways) still has in Ireland. If anybody wants to know more the Magdalene laundries, there is a great film called ‘The Magdalene Sisters’, you might notice the actress who played Julia in Nowhere Boy is in it.

It was that in a lot places here in America, especially back when The Beatles were in their prime. My mother was one of those babies put up for adoption. All we know about her biological mother is that she was 19 and unwed. My mother never met her biological mother (closed adoption), although she thought about in the past; however, over time she accepted her adopted mother as her mother. Girls were often forced to drop out of school, high school or college, due to pregnancy. Some were forced to move cross country to live with a family member, have the baby, put it for adoption, and never speak about again. It was shameful back then. I know some Catholic Churches even now will banish a pregnant teen. I wasn’t thinking in my right mind I guess when I put my previous comment. I was just thinking”its a Beatle baby. Beatle genes awesome. I have a job I’ll support without family help”, but then it goes back to it was a different time.