Woman subjected to ‘barbaric’ surgery

An elderly woman who was the victim of a brutal medical procedure more than 60 years ago has said she was treated worse than an animal.

Mairin O’Moore is one of more than 22,000 women to sign a petition given to a cross-party Oireachtas group to demand justice for victims, after her pelvis was deliberately cracked open as she gave birth to her first child.

Doctors performed the procedure of symphysiotomy without her knowledge, leaving Ms O’Moore with permanent damage, both physical and emotional.

“It was a nightmare, you couldn’t explain it,” Ms O’Moore said.

“An actual saw was used on the pelvis. I won’t go any further than that.”

Ms O’Moore, from Dublin, presented the petition to the symphysiotomy support group spokesman, Sinn Féin’s Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin.

Mr Ó Caoláin vowed to pass it on to Health Minister James Reilly in weeks in a bid to secure redress.

Mr Ó Caoláin said it was time the State answered for the medieval treatment women received under its care. “It’s very, very important now that every effort is employed to give these women closure,” said Mr Ó Caoláin.

“The victims of symphysiotomy deserve no less.”

The “barbaric” treatment, in which doctors broke the pelvis to ease childbirth, was forced on women as recently as the 1990s.

Ms O’Moore added that while her procedure was carried out 63 years ago, the memory is still fresh in her mind like a “nightmare”.

“The only way to describe it is barbaric. An animal would not have the same thing done to it,” she said.