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.