Church influence birth procedure - Irish Times today - harrowing

[BeingFluffy]

Warning - article is harrowing. Describes an "alternative" to CS by widening the pelvis. I was in tears of rage reading of an now elderly woman's experience and suffering. I can't believe this was an authorised surgical procedure. Did it go in the UK as well?

www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0612/1224317753223.html

I do feel though that where there were similar regimes there have been uprisings against dictatorial institutions. but this didnt happen in Ireland. I feel the general population do have to take some responsibility in the same way the elctorate do for the problems in this country.

Look at the way Poles are talked about with regard to the jews in Poland, and they were under Nazi occupation!

I just find the complete lack of blame on the irish population as a whole, incongrous with the way some other countries who have done similarly bad things to their own people are viewed.

Honestly. Ailin, it seems like you are determined to argue with me for anything. The limited anecdotal evidence I referred to was my own. I was saying my points and experiences are based on a teeny anecdotal viewpoint. I was not saying that this news report was limited evidence, nor the women who suffered. My criticism if you'd like to call it that was against myself not the article or the number of women whO suffered

Fair enough Ernest, sorry.

ethel, for years there were three political parties in Ireland, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael were mainly Catholic old boys and Labour was pretty much Catholic young boys! So there wasn't a huge amount of choice with regard to who to vote for, still isn't if you're not in Dublin.
Plus, I honestly think that this has a lot to do with the reverence with which doctors were regarded up to fairly recently. They had all the power in the hospitals and no-one ever, ever questioned them. Some were quite incompetent. Apparently Neary, the consultant who did all those CS hysterectomies, did it in a lot of cases as he was terrified of blood. And it took a tiny minority of brave hospital workers to finally blow the whistle on him. And I still know older women from Louth/Meath who think he was wonderful!

I dont really understand why the OP has said the church influence made this happen?
Its barbaric and was carried on by one single obstetrician, who, like some doctors, wanted to do things his way regardless of evidence or guidelines and did his own thing.
He wasnt a priest
Yes the hospital was a church one, but it wont have been the only church hospital in Ireland so why didnt they all continue with this imaginary 'church teaching'.

This is catholic bashing, there is no evidence in that article that he was instructed by the church. Everything you rely on is heresay

I agree with you to a certain extent ethel. There were definitely plenty of people who turned a blind eye to horrible things and who should now feel totally ashamed of themselves. With regards to this issue though, I think, like a lot of populations, doctors were seen as being out to do no harm and it wasn't until relatively recently that people realised that these procedures were actually unnecessary.

It wasn't one obstetrician mosschops, it was carried out in all the maternity hospitals in Ireland at one point.

@chip I get that, esp about Drs.

But the second this came up it instantly became a catholic bashing thread.

and it angers me beacuse it is sooo much easier to blame the vatican and this group of 'catholics' instead of actually tackling the issues closer to home. by blaming catholics i feel that posters are making it 'someone elses' problem, rather than looking at the social issues that their own families may have contributed to.

i imagine there are far more people on her who consider themselves irish than catholic on here, and its a good way of diverting attention imo.

What would you like to see happen ethel?

I never heard the CS/ RC thing before - just, so wrong. Were the RC hospitals not overseen by a health authority, then?

That op sounds awful - did that woman not get a proper anaesthetic, or did I misread the article?

callin the article acknowledges it was a common procedure at one time, but only one obs continued to do it into the 1980s which us what the OP was referring to

Am RC, BTW, hence comment about not having heard about it before, despite having Irish heritage on Mum's side so I would have thought she would have mentioned it (though can't imagine how that particular conversation would have started, I guess).

@calin just a little bit of independent thought on threads involving catholicism occassionally

The hospitals were almost all owned and run by religious orders and thus were required to stick their (Catholic) ethos. It was for that reason that women weren't given access to contraception and it was partly the reason why symhysiotomies were carried out though I agree with others that the Church can't totally take the blame as it was not an edict from the Vatican.

I don't get your point, mosschops. You stated in your previous post that the procedure was only carried out by one obstetrician, which wasn't the case. Yes it was one obs that carried it on longer than the others but that's a minor detail and doesn't really mean anything as far as I'm concerned.

The fact remains ethel that Catholicism was used as an excuse to treat women like shit.

@Calin I get that, but the victims, familes and friends and local communities were almost complicit with their silence imo.

Are Germans who were alive under the Nazis given the same 'victim' card? No, many would arge they were complicit with the actions of a regime.

@calin totally agree. But if I used Judaism as an excuse to blow up parliament tomorrow, would that be Judaism's fault?

I agree in relation to things like the magdalene laundries and the industrial schools where abuse went on. I don't think the same principle applies here because this procedure was something people didn't necessarily understand - they thought, because they were told by a doctor, that it was the best way to proceed, and the general public wouldn't have been aware that it was occurring. Does that make sense?

I wouldn't blame the present generation of Germans for what the Nazis did, would you?

I think if Judaism as a religion promoted the principle of blowing up parliament then, yes, they would have to take some of the blame.

@calin yes it does. Particuarly with regard to the Magdelene laudries which I have had in the back on my mind. Middle class people benfitted from those babies being stolen knowing what was going on and I am shocked that the irish and british populations are able to square that with the 'everyone wants to be irish' philosophy that swims around geneology sites and who do you think you are etc.

So given that I'm Irish, would you hold me accountable for the Magdalene laundries etc?

I would blame the generation of Germans who voted the Nazis in yes I would. The point I am making is that germans saw the ghettos being formed and di nothing about it and there is an ethical debate as to whether or not they were complicit. Germans spend ages studying the second world war, there are huge amounts of literature agonising over loving your parents when they saw what the nazis were doing and did nothing.

I think its ott tbh, and potentially harmful. But there is literally no regret or apology from the irish population at large about what they did to their own people or any call for it as they can, and other people in other countries will, aportion all blame to The Catholic Church. This level of 'victim' thinking is slightly unusal in modern history as a whole.

Plus these people used catholocism as an excuse, which is sick and disgusting, but The Vatican probably knew nothing about this. Would be interested to hear if they did.

@calin, I have irish heritage and would aportion some blame to people who were alive at the time, knew about it and did nothing. Yes I would.

Otherwise I would be condoning bystander effect.