If ever a story provided a strange snapshot of the Gubu Ireland before referenda and social change brought us kicking and screaming into the modern world, it is surely that of Dr Andrew Rynne. In the '70s, the media cast the pioneering vasectomy doctor as a kind of medical renegade, as he helped scores of Irish men avoid endless fatherhood. He prescribed the contraceptive pill to women before it was legal in Ireland. A priest called to his house and urged him to stop his work with vasectomies. His own father sought to have him excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Any interference with the...