The figure measures approximately 37 by 22 centimetres, and its surface has weathered to the point where certainty becomes impossible. Most scholars have read it as a sheela-na-gig, a category of medieval stone carving typically depicting a female figure explicitly displaying her genitalia, found across Ireland and Britain on churches, castles, and other stone structures, often interpreted as apotropaic symbols intended to ward off evil. The carving at Abbeylara has been catalogued as such by several researchers across the better part of a century.

The dissenting view is equally striking. Writing in 1954, Harnett proposed that the carving might instead represent the Virgin and Child, with what others read as female genitalia functioning as an oval or lozenge-shaped shield, and the supposed explicit detail being, in fact, an infant figure rendered in low relief. It is an interpretation that transforms the carving from one of the more unusual survivals in Irish ecclesiastical architecture into something entirely orthodox, and the weathered condition of the sandstone means neither reading can be dismissed. Guest noted the figure as early as 1936, and it has appeared in specialist literature by Andersen, McMahon and Roberts, Freitag, and Roberts across the decades since, each broadly maintaining the sheela-na-gig classification while acknowledging the difficulty. The abbey itself, a Cistercian foundation, provides an ambiguous setting: sheela-na-gigs do appear on medieval religious buildings in Ireland, sometimes incorporated into fabric that post-dates their original carving, though whether that reflects tolerance, reuse, or misidentification has long been debated.

The carving sits on the inner wall of the crossing-tower, so it is visible from within the abbey ruins rather than from the exterior. At 2.5 metres up, it requires no great effort to see, but the weathering means close attention is needed to make out any detail at all, and even then the ambiguity that has occupied scholars for decades will likely remain unresolved.