Patrick Leahy

Patrick Joseph Leahy was an Irish general practitioner and social campaigner, best known for his outspoken advocacy on contraception and euthanasia at a time when both were legally and socially contentious in Ireland. Born in Thurles, County Tipperary, he graduated from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1944 with first-class honours and spent his early career in wartime Britain before returning to Ireland in 1964 to serve as district medical officer at Ballyfermot Health Centre in Dublin, where he worked until 1988. A humanist influenced by the writings of Bertrand Russell and Robert Green Ingersoll, he became one of the most vocal medical critics of the Health Act 1979, openly defying the law by prescribing contraceptives to all patients he judged to need them and challenging the authorities to prosecute him. In 1995, he publicly disclosed that he had assisted at least fifty patients to die over the course of his career, in both Ireland and wartime England, prompting complaints to the Gardaí and the Irish Medical Council, neither of which ever brought proceedings against him. Following a recurrence of bladder cancer in 1997, he announced his intention to travel to Thailand to end his own life. However, he was asked to leave the country by the Thai medical council and returned to Ireland, where he died in December 1998 at the age of 81.

Occupation

general practitioner

Born

March 13, 1917

Died

December 17, 1998