When Bishop Denis Moynihan had Jayne Mansfield's cabaret cancelled from the pulpit in 1967, few could have imagined that within fifty years Ireland would repeal the Eighth Amendment by popular vote. What happened in between is one of the most profound social transformations in modern Europe.

Forbidden Ireland is a powerful, definitive and compulsively readable work of social history. Journalist TP O'Mahony traces seven decades of Church–State conflict. From the shadowed realities of Mother and Baby Homes and Magdalene laundries to the national outcry following the death of Savita Halappanavar, and the repeal of the Eighth Amendment. At the heart of the story are the women who refused to remain silent. Their courage forced Ireland to confront itself and change.

With an introduction by Rosita Sweetman, Forbidden Ireland is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the events that remade a country – and the forces that could unmake that progress. As women's rights face a regression across the Western world, O'Mahony's account is not only a history of what was won, but a warning about what could still be lost.



TP O'Mahony was born in Cork in 1939. From 1967 to 1989 he was religious affairs correspondent with the Irish Press and thereafter with the Irish Examiner. His previous books include Why the Catholic Church Needs Vatican III (Columba Books, 2010) and Has God Logged Off? The Quest for Meaning in the 21st Century (Columba Books, 2008) and The Politics of God (Veritas, 2023).





Rosita Sweetman is one of the founders of the Irish Women's Liberation Movement and has spent five decades as a writer and activist at the forefront of debates on feminism, the Catholic Church and the Irish State. Her books include On Our Knees (1972), On Our Backs: Sexual Attitudes in a Changing Ireland (1979), Feminism Backwards (Mercier Press, 2020) and her memoir Girl With a Fork in a World of Soup (Menma Books, 2025). She has written for the Irish Times, the Sunday Independent, and the Dublin Review of Books.



Foreword

Author's Note

Chapter 1: The Bishop and the Brouhaha

Chapter 2: A Heavy Moment in History

Chapter 3: A Changed Place

Chapter 4: Venus in Chains

Chapter 5: A Pyrrhic Victory

Chapter 6: From McGee to Miss X

Chapter 7: The Pill and the Papacy

Chapter 8: A Very Irish Coup

Chapter 9: The Papacy versus Democracy

Chapter 10: Missed Opportunities

Chapter 11: A Wall of Separation

Chapter 12: Church and State: A Toxic Embrace

Chapter 13: Celia and the Cardinal

Chapter 14: Republic of Shame

Chapter 15: A Flawed Redress Scheme

Chapter 16: Spiritual Leader or Head of State?

Chapter 17: Three Landmark Speeches

Chapter 18: Sex and Sanctity

Chapter 19: The Dominance of Patriarchy

Chapter 20: Transformative Changes

Chapter 21: A New Ireland?

Chapter 22: Afterword