May McGee and her husband Seamus won their case against the Attorney General and effectively overturned a 1935 ban on the sale of contraceptives in Ireland. This case transformed the Irish political landscape and paved the way for vastly improved reproductive choice for women. Photograph: National Women's Council/ Dermot Barry
Born: May 25th, 1944
Died: October 28th, 2025
Mary ‘May’ McGee, the Dublin woman who together with her husband Seamus (Shay) McGee won a Supreme Court case in 1973 for the right for married couples to use contraceptives, has died aged 81.
The couple’s landmark legal case is widely deemed to be the turning point in the separation of the roles of Church and State in Ireland.
The Skerries couple had four children at the time and May McGee had suffered from severe health problems during her pregnancies. She was advised by her GP, the late James Loughran, to use a diaphragm on health grounds.
This required the importation from England of a spermicide jelly which was seized by customs under a 1935 law banning the sale, importation and advertisement of
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