‘A lifelong advocate of the underdog’: Funeral of Dr Moira Woods takes place in Bray

The life and work of Moira Woods, a pioneering medical doctor, feminist, pacifist and campaigner on social issues, were remembered at her secular funeral in Bray, Co Wicklow, on Thursday.

Dr Woods, who was medical director of Ireland’s first sexual assault treatment unit in Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital, also worked at the Dublin Well Woman Centre and was co-director of the Irish Family Planning Association.

In 1983, she campaigned against the referendum on the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution which, when passed, gave equal rights to the foetus and mother. It was repealed following a referendum in 2018.

Dr Woods cared for the 14-year-old female rape victim in the X case, which led to the 1992 landmark Supreme Court decision establishing a right to abortion in cases where a pregnant woman’s life was at risk.

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“She was vilified for her involvement in opposing the 1983 amendment as she was later for her involvement in the X case in 1992,” her son, Christopher Woods, said in his eulogy at Colliers Funeral Home. “When the X case exploded, she became the target of many who were convinced this was all a conspiracy.”

Her eldest daughter, Penny Omell, said her mother was frank, forthright and outspoken. “She was fierce, determined and compassionate, and a lifelong advocate of the underdog. She hated secrecy and lies. She was a great non-judgmental listener and encouraged people to let their secrets out in public.”

From 1997-2002, Dr Woods was subjected to the longest Medical Council fitness-to-practise committee inquiry in its history. It followed allegations of professional misconduct in relation to her diagnosis of sexual abuse of children in five families in the 1980s.

During and after the hearings, she faced harassment. Following the inquiry, she was not struck off the medical register but advised to work in multidisciplinary teams in future.

In the 1960s, Dr Woods was a cofounder of the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) in Ireland. She also campaigned against the Vietnam War and sought better public housing in Dublin through her work with the Dublin Housing Action Committee. WLM cofounders Maureen Johnston, Máirín de Burca and Rosita Sweetman attended the funeral.

“She was a solid rock for support when we started the Women’s Liberation Movement. She was enormously kind,” Ms de Burca told The Irish Times.

Bonnie Maher, who worked with Dr Woods at the Well Woman Centre, said she was a champion of women’s health.

“She had a magnetic personality. You were drawn to her to listen, to learn, to seek advice, to share her scathing wit and irreverent humour. She was so far ahead of her time in her heroic efforts to address child sexual abuse. Time has certainly vindicated her efforts,” she said.

The eldest of three children of Kathleen (nee Brennan) and John Fann, a British colonial civil servant, (Kathleen Cecilia) Moira Fann was evacuated to Australia from Burma with her mother and siblings during the second World War. She later attended boarding schools in England and studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin.

Following a short marriage to fellow student Roger Hackett – with whom she had two children – she began a relationship with, and later married, her former lecturer at Trinity, the renowned surgeon Robert (Bobby) Woods. They had four children before he died of cancer in 1971.

Recalling his youth in a large open house on Ailesbury Road in Dublin with visiting doctors, lawyers, politicians, trade unionists, artists and journalists, Christopher Woods said his mother was passionately interested in politics and social affairs.

“As children, we were brought on marches and demonstrations. I came to think of Gaj’s restaurant in Baggot Street as home from home. This was a place of intense conversations about left-wing politics at the time,” said Mr Woods, who is the principal of Wesley College in Dublin.

Following the death of her second husband, Dr Woods began a 20-year relationship with the former chief of staff of the Official IRA, Cathal Goulding, with whom she had two children.

Following the breakdown of that relationship, she moved to Italy, where she found love again with Italian-American Guido Ceen and remained there for the next 26 years. She returned to Ireland in December 2021 after a fall and spent her last year in a nursing home in Dublin. She died on March 27th.

Among those who attended at the funeral were former senator Mary Henry; Press Ombudsman Susan McKay; businessman Harry Crosbie; retired barrister Catherine Forde; barrister and former attorney general John Rogers; trade union leader Des Geraghty, former director of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre Olive Braiden; and fashion editor of The Irish Times Deirdre McQuillan.