Brid slams government report on symphysiotomy in the Dáil

Imagine you are in labour that won’t progress. Imagine the doctor says “we won’t do a Caesarian – instead we’ll break your pelvis”. That’s what happened to hundreds of women in our hospitals, more so where a conservative Catholic ethos was strongest. The results were mostly crippling – condemning the women to a lifetime of pain, incontinence, difficulty walking. A report on this practice was commissioned by the government (the women were challenging the State on what had been allowed be done to them). We debated this report in the Dail today. The report is a disgrace – done by judge, and seems designed more to get the State off the hook than to support the women who were treated wtih such cruelty