Francis Constantine Ward (12 February 1891 – 15 December 1966) was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician and medical doctor.
He was selected to contest the 1918 general election for Sinn Féin in Monaghan North, but stood aside in favour of Ernest Blythe, who won the seat.
[3] After Fianna Fáil's victory at the 1932 general election he was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government and Public Health.
[2] Frequently consulting with catholic church authorities (notably Dublin archbishop John Charles McQuaid) over medical matters, at whose behest he banned sale of the newly marketed sanitary tampons in 1944, out of concerns regarding the sexual arousal of girls at an impressionable age.
Ward was embittered at the failure of Fianna Fáil colleagues to rally to his support and never again attended Leinster House and did not contest the 1948 general election (in which MacCarvill stood unsuccessfully in Monaghan for Clann na Poblachta).
The Ward scandal contributed to the undermining of public confidence in the Fianna Fáil government and its 1948 electoral defeat.