‘Brutality from beginning to end’

The sheer agony of the pain suffered by 1,500 Irish women who were subjected to a symphysiotomy in hospitals between 1944 and 1992 never dulls with each retelling of a personal story, they say.

Rita McCann — a sprightly 86-year-old mother of five from Monaghan — recalls how her body was “sawed” by doctors when she attended the National Maternity Hospital in Holles St, Dublin, in 1957 for the birth of her first child. “‘Brutality’ is the word to use from beginning to end,” Rita says.

She had spent a week in hospital, including 30 hours in the labour ward, before an operation now widely regarded as a medieval-style practice was performed on her using a local anaesthetic shortly after midnight.