TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen was yesterday urged to dismiss Minister for Health Mary Harney from Cabinet over her refusal to set up an inquiry into why symphysiotomies were performed on hundreds of Irish women up to the 1980s.
The “brutal” surgical procedure to permanently widen the pelvis was performed on nearly 1,500 women as they gave birth, leaving many of them incontinent and in pain.
Speaking in Ballinasloe later yesterday, Ms Harney said the practice, which was discontinued 27 years ago, appeared very barbaric, but she saw no role for the Government in holding an inquiry. It could be a matter for the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists at the Royal College of Physicians, she said.
“It was replaced to a large extent by Caesarean section, and now up to 25 per cent of all births in Ireland are done through Caesarean section,” she said.
The Department of Health’s chief medical officer was concerned about the rising number of sections, she said, and discussions were being held with the institute on the issue.
Survivors of Symphysiotomy (SOS), the support group for women who underwent the procedure, says the claim that the procedure was accepted practice in emergency situations between the 1950 and 1980s is a myth. They say it had largely been replaced by Caesarean section in the developed world, except in Ireland.The SOS group feels what happened to them amounted to abuse and that Ms Harney is allowing it be covered up by not holding an inquiry.
Kathleen Naughton, from Duleek, Co Meath, who underwent the procedure at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, in 1977, said yesterday she hasn’t walked right since the procedure 33 years ago. “If Minister Harney was in my body even for one day we would have the review the next day,” she said.
Colm MacGeehin, solicitor for the women, said claims by the Government that symphysiotomy was a necessary operation in its day and few complications resulted were a lie. It was used, he claimed, to ensure women could continue to have children whereas a Caesarean section might limit that.
RTÉ’s Prime Time programme, which focused on symphysiotomies on Thursday night, claimed medical records indicated the former Drogheda obstetrician Dr Michael Neary, who was struck off the medical register in 2003 over unnecessarily removing the wombs of 10 patients, had carried out the symphysiotomy procedure on at least one patient. However, Dr Neary, on the programme, denied this and asked if it was “the smell of money” that was now causing women to seek an inquiry.