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Tributes have poured in from across Ireland after the death of Mary McGee, a woman credited with sparking a “social revolution” that paved the way for the legalisation of contraceptives in the country.
McGee, who went by the name May, and her husband, Seamus, hit the headlines in 1972 after the couple lodged a landmark legal challenge against a decades-old law that banned the sale or import of contraceptives in Ireland.
The couple had four children at the time. McGee’s second and third pregnancies had been complicated by health issues. She nearly died at one point and suffered a stroke, and a doctor said any future pregnancies could prove fatal and advised her to take contraception.
A 1935 ban on the sale and import of contraceptives, however, made it nearly impossible for her to follow the doctor’s instructions.
The couple turned to the UK, placing an order for a diaphragm and spermicide jelly, according to the Irish Times. The package was seized by customs, and they were told that if they attempted to order contraceptives from abroad again, they would face fines or jail time.
McGee refused to give in. “I was livid that somebody in government could tell us how to live our lives. I wasn’t going to back down,” she told the Irish Examiner in 2022.
The couple took their case to the high court, where Seamus, who went by the name of Shay, laid out exactly what was at stake. “I’d prefer to see her use contraceptives than be placing flowers on her grave,” he told a hearing in 1972.
After their legal challenge was struck down, the couple appealed to the supreme court. Four of the five judges ruled in their favour, finding that contraception was a private matter for married couples and that the decision should be free of interference from the state.
Their victory resonated across Ireland and around the world, with the couple receiving congratulatory messages from the World Health Organization and from as far as Hawaii.
They also faced anger from some quarters, later telling media of how they had walked out of their parish, never to return, after the priest suggested they had brought the church into disrepute.
The couple’s legal battle remains the court’s single most important decision in terms of its political and social consequences, the supreme court justice Gerard Hogan later noted.
It was the “legal equivalent of the moon landing” in that it forced the government to gradually shift its stance on contraception, Hogan said at a 2023 conference examining the McGee case and its legacy, in remarks reported by the Irish Times.
The decision “shows how one brave woman single-handedly changed the course of Irish social history”, he said, leading to “a social revolution, the consequences of which are still being played out”.
As news broke on Wednesday that May had died peacefully at a hospital in Berlin, tributes poured in across social media as people remembered her courage and hailed her as a hero for the women of Ireland.
The writer and film director Paul Duane wrote on Bluesky: “How far we’ve come. Now Irish religious conservatism is limited to a few thousand spoiled votes and a lot of airtime on [Irish public broadcaster] RTE. But the country isn’t listening to them any more, thanks to brave women like May McGee.”
The writer Fintan O’Toole hailed her as “one of the heroines of modern Ireland.”
Laura Kelly, a historian of medicine and gender in modern Ireland and professor at the University of Strathclyde, wrote on Bluesky: “May McGee was such a courageous woman and had a huge impact.”
Shay McGee died in January 2024.
