Women’s rights leap halted in ’20s

A huge leap forward in recognising that women had a right to protect themselves from repeated unwanted pregnancies was halted by the Catholic Church and Irish State in the 1920s.

That is according to UCC academic Sandra McAvoy, who told the Merriman Summer School yesterday concerns about the protection of married women’s lives had no traction with the Church or State.

In her paper, Women and fertility control in 20th century Ireland, Dr McAvoy said: “It is almost exactly a year since, Sir Nigel Rodley, chair of the UN Committee on the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, suggested that our prohibition on abortion meant that in this country a woman pregnant as a result of rape is treated as ‘a vessel and nothing more’.”