Pregnant women still fear for jobs

IT’S now expected of someone in the teaching profession to bemoan religious communities who sacked single mothers who had just given birth.

And yes, I am one such teacher who finds this recent fact of Irish history disturbing. I am a teacher in my 20s and were I to lose my job due to the birth of a (totally innocent) baby, I would be devastated, humiliated and soon destitute.

Previously, when women were fired by Catholic organisations, it really was a case of ‘punish the woman for her baby’. If the woman had had a quiet abortion (the Catholic Church teaches that this is a mortal sin), her religious employers might have been none the wiser. As a faithful Catholic, it is a scar-like shame for me to hear of religious order members who treated new mothers (albeit unwed) with such callous indifference.

However, while most people have the idea of members of the Catholic Church as the ‘baddies’, they may wish to consider that modern employers are not necessarily ‘goodies’.

Women of all ages are still quietly ‘let go’ for a surprise pregnancy. I have worked as a crisis pregnancy counsellor, and I found that the prospect of losing employment was a regrettable fear driving many women to abort.

They are faced with two poisoned chalices:

1. Lose the baby and continue to work.

2. Risk job loss and subsequently endure grinding poverty.

Many women resort to carefully concealing pregnancies, saving money assiduously and working very hard for a promotion in order to make it more difficult for their employer to fire them.

Loose-weave tweed coats are especially useful for private pregnancies. But this isn’t the lifestyle of women working for the Mercy sisters in the 1980s — it’s probably a few faces you see waiting for the bus every morning.

So, while it is regrettable that communities of Catholic religious acted so dubiously, we must not think the modern secular workplace (for teachers and other female professionals) is a promised land. We must also preserve the larger legacy left us by the religious sisters and brothers who gave their lives so selflessly for the betterment of the education, spiritual development and health of countless souls.

Mary O’Regan

Murlough

Firgrove Drive

Bishopstown

Cork