Until the late twentieth century, Ireland was effectively a social theocracy. The Catholic Church imposed rigid controls on many aspects of life, particularly women’s sex lives, going so far as confiscating the babies of unwed mothers and selling them for adoption abroad. Abortion was banned. In 1983, a two-thirds majority voted to enshrine the ban in the country’s constitution, in the form of an amendment declaring “the right to life of the unborn . . . equal [to the] right to life of the mother.” Decades of acrimonious debate followed, while every year thousands of Irish women made the journey to Britain,…