Northern Ireland has long produced strong women. They held their communities together during the Troubles while their menfolk fought. Purvis led the loyalist Progressive Unionist Party for three years until she resigned over the failure of its paramilitary counterpart, the Ulster Volunteer Force, to disarm in 2010. She also founded the Marie Stopes clinic, and when we met at the headquarters of Alliance for Choice, an industrial unit overshadowed by the giant steel-and-wire-mesh “peace wall” that still divides the Falls Road from the Shankill, she told me harrowing stories of women who have sought its help.
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