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.