Symphysiotomy medical records - A hasty mistake

THE assessor to the symphysiotomy payment scheme, Maureen Harding Clark, has repeated her intention to have applicants’ unclaimed medical records destroyed. This could prove to be a hasty and unnecessary mistake.

The scheme holds documents belonging to nearly 750 women, with more than one third of those having undergone the barbaric procedure without their knowledge or consent.

The practice of cutting the cartilage of a pregnant women’s pelvic bone, to widen the birth canal, was still being carried out in Ireland up to 1987, decades after it was abandoned elsewhere. Many women were left with long-term medical difficulties and the UN Human Rights Committee ruled that this was a breach of their rights to freedom from torture, and from inhuman and degrading treatment.

Destroying the medical records of these unfortunate women will add insult to injury. Future generations may well wonder why we did not have the wisdom, or the compassion, to honour their suffering and endurance by ensuring that the written records of their treatment were retained, so that such mistakes would never be repeated.

They will also be an invaluable resource for future historians to determine the motivation behind the procedure.

To paraphrase the words of Italian philosopher, George Santayana, those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors are destined to repeat them.