It’s a man’s world even when the issue is a woman’s body

IT was a dreary evening in 1983 when a woman knocked on the door of a Labour activist in a Dublin housing estate and asked him to drive her to the polling station.

Within 15 minutes of his return from having done so, six more women were at his doorstep, making the same request so their voices could be heard in the abortion referendum.

“It emerged, in the course of our conversations, that the husbands of the women had refused to drive them to the polling station because they were not happy with their wives’ voting intentions,” Labour TD Kevin Humphreys recalled in the Dáil this week.