Brutal surgery of symphysiotomy was inflicted on Irish women

The former Minister for Health, Mary Harney, stated in the Dáil on Feb 23, 2010, that she has “ruled out an inquiry into symphysiotomy surgical operations”.

Instead she on that occasion informed opposition parties that she had written to the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists at the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland asking them to furnish her with a report before Apr 2010 into the number of symphysiotomy surgical operations carried out from 1944 to date.

This brutal surgical procedure was to permanently widen the pelvis, and was performed on nearly 1,500 women as they gave birth, leaving many of them incontinent and in pain.

Survivors of Symphysiotomy (SOS), the support group for women who underwent this procedure, say that the claim that this procedure was accepted practice in emergency situations between the 1950s and 1980s is a myth. They say it had largely been replaced by a caesarean operation in the developed world, except in Ireland.

The SOS group feels what happened to them amounted to abuse and that Ms. Harney was allowing it to be covered up by not holding an inquiry. Mr Colm MacGeehin, solicitor for the women, said that claims by the Government that symphysiotomy was a necessary operation in its day and that few complications resulted were lies. It was used, he claimed, to ensure women could continue to have children whereas a caesarean section might limit that.

A Prime Time special programme Feb 18, 2010, presented by reporter Paul Maguire, stated. “That symphysiotomy is the cutting of a woman’s pelvis into two to facilitate the delivery of her baby. This procedure was discontinued in the developed world in the early part of the 20th century. Symphysiotomy was reintroduced here in 1944. Unbelievably, this practice continued in our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda until 1982.”

That RTE‘s Prime Time programme, focused on symphysiotomies, and claimed medical records indicated that the former Drogheda obstetrician Mr Michael Neary, who was struck off the medical register in 2003 over unnecessarily removing the wombs of 10 patients, had carried out the symphysiotomy procedure on at least one patient. This was denied by Mr Neary on the programme.

The programme also implied that symphysiotomy was a symptom of the misogynistic Catholic medicine that pertained in Ireland at that time, although that link was not really explained.

Edward Mahon

Clonskeagh

Dublin 14