Awful practice of symphisiotomy - WARNING harrowing details

[schoolvolunteer]

I'm ashamed to say that I had never heard of this and am absolutely appalled that medical professionals could have carried out this butchery. The reasoning behind it too, to allow the women to be pregnant again and again and "suffer" the rite of a painful childbirth in accordance with a religious doctrine. Irish womanhood has not been served well by the Catholic church.

Please be warned that the details are excrutiating to read and relate to a procedure used during childbirth that left many women crippled and in pain. I would not have wanted to read this if I was pregnant. I think this is akin to FGM.

link here

That is beyond grim. I've never heard of it before. All those poor women, fucking butchers.

Oh my god.
Those poor women.
Barbaric.

I don't know what to say, I'm a biologist, I'm pretty good with medical stuff, but I can only skim that.

Just awful

Makes me so upset to read this.

That's beyond horrific. I've never heard of it.

I'd never hard of thay procedure before. It made me cry when the lady compared the kindness vets showed to livestock calving on the family farm compared to the brutal treatment she suffered at the hands of a doctor. What makes me really sick is that the medical staff seemed to enjoy inflicting pain on women.

Good grief.

And they did that unnecessarily because a CS would have done the job?

I would love to see those women take the hospitals to court - though I suppose the Drs concerned are now dead.

How could they revere the Catholicism they purported t serve when it was built on treating women like this in pursuit of '10 babies'? Horrific. They can't have been normal healthy human beings. They must have been warped or something. (the doctors)

Sickening and all in the name of religion.

Those accounts actually made me cry

How could anyone do that to a scared new mother? Heartless bastards

This is so awful I can't even finish the article poor poor women!

Barbaric.

I had to stop reading. Why did they do it?

I couldn't finish reading it. It's disgusting to think that people did that. Those poor women, I really feel for them.

I can't read past the first couple of paragraphs. That has to be the worst thing I've ever heard of anyone living through.

I am shocked that I have never heard of this - I ask myself why? I suppose it might be because it's too horrific for words, or because it happened to a relatively small amount of women, or maybe the church did a good job of keeping it quiet? It's like something from the middle ages but we are talking about something that happened in Ireland just a few decades ago. Nothing can compensate those women for what they went through.

Another reason to hate the catholic religion, or thins done in its name. Absolutely disgusting

They did it, Opal, because it was deemed unsafe to have more than three caesarian sections; sterilization was recommended after three. The Catholic Church didn't want any form of contraception, it is against their doctrine. This way, they could get the baby out and she could go on to have more (whether she wanted them or not), unless they killed or crippled her .
I read on the article, OP, that one of the victim's requested her notes and that they had "disappeared". They denied all knowledge of her. Sickening.

Good God what the fuck have I just read? Feel sick.

Absolutely horrific. Couldn't read it all :(
Poor women.

My god, why have we never heard of this?

According to Wikipedia this was still happening in 1992.

I would have been old enough to have a child in 1992.

Why isn't this all over the news?

I've never heard of that before and my family are all Irish Catholic.

Horrific, I could only read the first few paragraphs. I've never heard of this.

I can't read any more- what happened after the birth- did they recover enough to walk etc?

That is so sad. Like lots of PPs I couldn't read it all - I hope those women are looked after properly now & treated with the dignity & respect they deserve.

What is going to happen now? Will they be given compensation of some variety to help them? I do hope so.