Ms Breda McMahon:

I believe it is because there was a lot of stigma, and still is a certain amount of stigma around menstruation, which is how it normally presents, and also around infertility. These are taboo subjects in a lot of societies around the world. There was a lot of confusion about endometriosis when our association was founded. It was thought that endometriosis was some kind of sexually transmitted disease. There was a lot of misinformation and myths out there. There was a huge amount of stigma to break through. It was also a matter of normalising talking about pain, periods and all these taboo things.