Mothers suffered abuse in a hospital driven by religion – not science

IN the litany of maternity care scandals at the Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, one stands out: symphysiotomy.

Gerard Connolly, the hospital’s ‘foundation’ obstetrician, was a self-confessed “addict” of symphysiotomy: “If we cannot deliver with the vacuum extractor and drip we divide the symphysis,” he told the Royal Academy of Medicine in 1966. His addiction went unchallenged. Mothers had to wait for Connolly to die before the practice ceased. More than 400 pelvises were severed there, some at 34 weeks of pregnancy, others in the aftermath of a Caesarean section. These operations were high-risk: babies occasionally died and many mothers were left permanently disabled, incontinent and in pain.

Symphysiotomy was driven not by science, but by faith. Caesarean section (the norm for difficult births) was associated with “the improper prevention of pregnancy”, as Arthur Barry put it. Women were also used at the Lourdes as teaching aides for medical students bound for the tropics and even, apparently, as “lab rats” to test the outer limits of the surgery, presumably for application in medical centres owned by the Medical Missionaries of Mary overseas.