It happened with my father's birth I think. He was the oldest of seven children like typical Catholic families of the time. As a child I knew she walked kind of funny but I put it down to her being an old lady (she wasn't but to a child's eyes it's different). As with something you're familiar with you don't question it. Later my father joined a cult and developed an acrimonious relationship with my grandfather who believed the cult was trying to steal his property and so he disinherited my father. We moved away while I was still very young and so I didn't see my grandmother for a time. In my late teens my father and grandfather became more friendly and we visited occasionally.
My grandmother was becoming ill, first diabetes, then Alzheimers. Around this time I learned from my mother than the doctors in the Bons (as we called the Cork Hospital) had performed a Symphysiotomy. My mother described it as a butcher shop involving hacking and sawing. I think a radio show prompted her outburst on the topic, although she and my grandmother didn't get along she obviously felt deep revulsion about the affair. As with most of the women I don't think they asked for permission, they just wheeled them into surgery. I think what galled my grandparents the most is that they perceived the Bons to be a much superior hospital to all the others. It was private. It had reputable doctors. It was Catholic. They were farmers so this would have been a considered expense for them. I'm confident they didn't want to talk about it, it was probably too much.
The part marked '5' was severed using something like a wood saw or circular saw. Saying they broke the pelvis isn't an exaggeration.
The accounts from the wiki are grotesque. Catherine McKeever, a private patient at the Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda in 1969, told the Committee that she did not realise what had happened: 'I saw him [the doctor] with an instrument which I thought was a bit brace because my father was a wood turner. I felt a crack … Nobody answered me or said anything'. Margaret Conlan, who was operated upon in 1962 in St Finbarr's Hospital, Cork, testified that she had never been told anything about it: 'My baby’s head was perforated and the baby died… I did not find out [about the symphysiotomy] until I read it in the newspaper'.
It seems the practice was done to encourage more children. I'm not familiar with Catholic dogma so I don't understand why doctors would foist on their patients. Today I wonder today how the Muslim and African doctors are getting away with FGM in Irish and English hospitals, so in a way the barbarism continues. Don't trust religious fanatics or doctors and especially not both.
The problem is that they both tend to come well dressed and respected by their communities. Taking them down makes you the bad guy, not them.
